Oh, ¿Qué Será?
Willie Colón · 1981 · written by Chico Buarque, from the album Fantasmas
Not a story but a mystery: something sighed about in bedrooms and poems that no one can name or stop. Willie Colón's salsa take on a Brazilian classic.
The story
1.A spoken beginning
Before the music, a voice speaks about believing: in the end, the only choice is to believe or not, sometimes even while crying. It sets up a song about something you can't prove.
2.The question
Then the chorus starts asking what it could be: this thing people sigh about in their bedrooms, whisper in the verses of songs, and keep asking crazy questions about.
3.Everywhere
It turns up in the thoughts and talk of lovers, of delirious poets and drunken prophets, in the daydreams of unhappy people and among the ones society pushes out.
4.No name
It has no definition and never will, and no warning could stop it. The song never says what it is: love, desire, freedom, or something nobody dares to name. That's the point.
5.Ghosts
It ends in its haunted part: someone knocks on the door three times, and nobody's there. They're ghosts, the singer says, and so are we.
Key phrases
- “Oh, qué será, qué será”Oh, what can it be, what can it beThe question the whole song asks and never answers. Buarque's Portuguese title asks the same.
- “anda suspirando por las alcobas”Going around sighing in the bedroomsAlcoba is an old-fashioned, slightly literary word for bedroom. From the first lines, the mystery smells of desire.
- “No tiene concepto y nunca tendrá”It has no definition, and never willConcepto is a concept, a definition: whatever this is, it can't be pinned down.
- “Siento la puerta tocar tres veces”I hear the door knock three timesSentir, “to feel”, is also everyday Spanish for sensing a sound. Three knocks, and nobody seen.
- “Son fantasmas, somos fantasmas”They're ghosts, we're ghostsThe line that gave the album its name, Fantasmas.
Context
Chico Buarque wrote “O Que Será” in 1976 for the Brazilian film Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, from Jorge Amado's novel, and recorded it with Milton Nascimento. It came out under Brazil's military dictatorship, and its lyrics, full of desire and of things that can't be said out loud, were heard as more than a love song.
Willie Colón, the trombonist and bandleader behind “Pedro Navaja” and “Juanito Alimaña”, made his own Spanish version rather than a word-for-word translation. He sang it himself and put it first on Fantasmas (Fania, 1981), his second solo album, with Afro-Caribbean percussion, three trombones, strings and choirs. The spoken introduction draws on The Hour of the Star, a novel by the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector.
It became one of the best-known songs of his career. Colón died in February 2026.
On the dance floor
Slower and moodier than most salsa: the strings and choirs make it feel like a film score. Dance it smooth and connected, and leave room for musicality.
It opens with the spoken passage before the band comes in. Wait for the rhythm to settle before you start.
The ghostly “fantasmas” section changes the color of the song. It's a good moment for a pause, or for slow styling.
This is our own retelling of the song, not its lyrics or a translation of them: the few short phrases quoted are there to explain what they mean. The song belongs to its writer, Chico Buarque.