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“Sueño con serpientes” (“Dream of Serpents ,” 1974); in
Días y flores, 1975

This song recounts Rodríguez’s dream, where he kills serpents, only to have larger ones arise. As the songwriter puts it,

Yo soñé con esa música. Y fue un sueño con serpientes; había serpientes en el sueno. Recuerdo que me desperté de madrugada. Y tenía una grabadora al lado de la cama. La guitarra también. Y toqué un pedazo de la música que había escuchado en el sueño. Y al día siguiente cuando me desperté, escuché la música y terminé la canción. Eh...todavía de cama (Rodríguez 2006, interview).^[1]

Various writers have speculated that the song symbolizes the never-ending struggle through life’s conflicts, the truth found by facing one’s hidden fears, absolute truths and false images that mislead people, or political systems which sow the seeds of their own destruction (Godoy 1984: 46). When I mentioned this last hypothesis of politics to Rodríguez, he remarked that open-ended songs are amenable to different interpretations, which he preferred to leave up to the listener:

Las canciones que son muy abiertas, y cualquier mensaje que es abierto, se puede prestar con esta interpretación. Y la metáfora también ayuda en que contiene un sentido abierto. Se puede, como es una canción extraña en cuanto lo que contaba. . . sueño con serpientes, con serpientes de mar. Yo quise vincular a alguna idea que le pudiera dar una orientación a quién escucha, para que se diera orientación a persona que escucha. Y por eso le puso un verso de Brecht.  A correr del verso de Brecht, vincula la razón por una dialéctica (Rodríguez 2006, interview).^[2]

Nonetheless, he himself found it to be an allegory of the never-ending struggles of life:

Creo que estaba pensando en un sentido general de la existencia de la vida, de un sentido muy simbólico, de que como cuando uno empieza a la escuela, tiene que ir al primer grado. Solamente cuando vence la asignatura del primer grado puede pasar al segundo.  Y que la vida es algo parecido, en todos sentidos. Que hay que enfrentar, superar, para poder enfrentar luego otro…porque superar un problema grande no hace más que prepararte para uno mayor (Rodríguez 2006, interview).^[3]

Rodríguez’s own explanation, as well as the preface by Bertolt Brecht, would argue for this interpretation of never-ending struggle. Nonetheless, the text contains several references regarding the conflict between an individual’s principles and a system: “[la serpiente] se destruye/cuando . . . planteo con un verso, una verdad,” and “ [la serpiente] me trata de tragar/pero se atora con un trébol de mi sien.”

Fig. 12-“Sueño con serpientes,” Lyrics and chord charts

Suitable to a circular, never-ending allegory, the song consists of a four-chord sequence that stays constant throughout the song. The mode is mixolydian, with D minor (v) occurring rather than D major (V). As a result, there are no V-I cadences. All the cadences can be interpreted either as an elaboration of the VII-I cadence, familiar in rock music, or as plagal cadences, reached through a circle of fourths, i.e. F (VII) à C (IV) à G (I) (Ex. 12A). This double-plagal cadence, as dubbed by Walter Everett, has been common in rock music of the late 1960s and beyond, with a few well-known examples including “With a Little Help from My Friends” (Beatles, 1967), “Sympathy for the Devil” (Rolling Stones, 1968), and “Volunteers” (Jefferson Airplane, 1969) (Everett 1999: 103).

Ex. 12A-“Sueño con serpientes,” Verse

The complete avoidance of V-I cadences seems conscious: Even in the final repeat of the refrain, when the dominant D finally appears, the authentic cadence is avoided with a return to the double-plagal pattern. With this repeating four-chord pattern in double-plagal cadences, the circular harmonies seem a musical metaphor for the textual theme of endless struggle.

• [1] “I dreamed with this music. It was a dream with serpents; there were serpents in the dream. I remember that I woke up in the wee hours of the morning. And I had a tape recorder beside the bed. A guitar, too. And I played a part of the music that I had heard in the dream. And the next day when I woke up, I listened to the music and finished the song. Uh. . . still in bed.”
• [2] “Songs that are very open, and any message that is open, could be given that interpretation. And the metaphor also helps in that it has an open meaning. One could, as it is a strange song in its story . . . A dream of serpents, of serpents in the sea. I wanted to connect to some idea to which I could give an orientation to the listener. And for this reason I put it in the verse from Brecht. The reasoning for a dialectic is tied to the flow of the verse from Brecht.”
• [3] ”I believe I was thinking in a general sense about existence and life, in a very symbolic sense. For example, when one starts school, one first has to go to first grade. Only when one completes the requirements of first grade can one go on to second grade. And life is something like that, in all senses. One has to confront and overcome one thing in order to be able to confront yet another. . . because to overcome a big problem does nothing more than to prepare you for another, bigger one.”