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“Al final de este viaje en la vida” (“At the end of this Journey in Life ,” 1970); in
Al final de este viaje en la vida, 1978

This song, written on Rodríguez’s return journey on the Océano Pacífico in early 1970, speaks of coming to terms with a difficult past and looks optimistically toward the future. While the song is probably most accurately described as strophic with a short refrain (at “Quedamos los que puedan sonreír”), its first two couplets can be considered separately from the more modulatory section from “Somos prehistoria” up to “son Dios”; I am labeling this latter section a bridge, as it offers contrasting material and ends on a dominant, while calling the first two couplets a verse.^[1]

Fig. 9-“Al final de este viaje en la vida,” Lyrics and chord chart

The verse speaks to a difficult past (“nuestros cuerpos hinchados de ir/ a la muerte, el odio, al borde del mar,” “una cura de tiempo y de amor,/una gasa que envuelva un viejo dolor”) and the songwriter’s overcoming that past (“nuestro rastro invitando a vivir./Por lo menos, por eso es que estoy aquí.”). The tonality of the setting is unambiguously in A major, resolving to perfect authentic cadences, and thus provide harmonic grounding to this optimism.  The beginning of the bridge carries on this theme of victory over the past (in the second verse, “Al final del viaje está el horizonte./ Al final de viaje partiremos de nuevo”), and the perfect authentic cadences, reiterated with faster harmonic rhythm, continue this firm, if not insistent, harmonic grounding.

However, the tone changes with the third line in the bridge (Ex. 9A, “Al final de viaje comienza un camino”), which ends in a deceptive cadence to C# minor (iii).  Then follows a sequence of chromatically ascending and descending diminished chords that prolong the progression, iii-VI-I-II-V. In the first line progressing from iii-VI (“otro buen camino que seguir descalzos/contando la arena”), at the harmonies pause on two chords outside the conventional A major scale -- F (bVI) and F# (VI#)-- like a harmonic representation of the detours taken in life to which the text refers. In the following line, which prolongs I-II-V, a brief pause back on A major are followed by a diminished chord sequence downwards, emphasizing “tú, y yo,” before arriving on V of A. This arrival on a half cadence, following this chromatic turbulence, sounds like a breakthrough to tonal clarity – an apt setting for the word “intactos,” and harmonically symbolic of the composer’s hopeful reemergence from difficult times. The singer’s optimism is reaffirmed by the refrain (“Quedamos los que puedan sonreír”), which descends unambiguously through the A major scale, with emphatic leaps in the melody at “en plena luz.” Hence, the clarity of the verse and refrain, interrupted by the harmonic turbulence of the bridge, with its breakthrough back to the tonic, serve as a harmonic metaphor of overcoming difficulties to achieve a new start. As Rodríguez put it, “’en plena luz’….es muy gráfica lo que estoy cantando” (Rodríguez 2006, interview).^[2]

Ex. 9A-“Al final de este viaje,” Bridge, Refrain

• [1] John Covach attributes such characteristics to bridges, and in his definition of them, bridges can appear more than once in a song (Covach 2004: 69, 74-75).
• [2] “’In full light’ – it’s very graphic what I’m singing here.”

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