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Tiburón

Willie Colón & Rubén Blades · 1981 · written by Rubén Blades, from the album Canciones del Solar de los Aburridos

A shark prowls the Caribbean coast, and the chorus tells everybody to grab a stick. The political salsa that got Rubén Blades kept off US radio.

The story

  1. 1.The sea

    The song opens on the Caribbean: a stormy sea, waves breaking from the horizon, the green and blue of the water shining under the sun. A warrior fish is passing through the kingdom it rules. Pity anyone it catches: there'll be no mercy.

  2. 2.The shark never sleeps

    Night falls, the sea calms down, the stars come out, and the whole Caribbean rests. Only the shark is still awake, still restless, still hunting.

  3. 3.What are you doing here?

    The coro asks it straight: what are you looking for on the shore, on our sand? Your place is out at sea. You're never full. Watch out for the whale. Respect my flag.

  4. 4.Grab a stick

    Then the song becomes a call to action. If you see the shark coming, hit it, without hesitating, so it learns there's honor here. Unity is strength. Don't let it eat our sister El Salvador. And after that, everybody gets to work rebuilding.

Key phrases

  • “Tiburón, ¿qué buscas en la orilla?”Shark, what are you looking for on the shore?The coro's question, over and over. A shark belongs out at sea: the shore is where people live.
  • “Lo tuyo es mar afuera”Your place is out at seaMar afuera, “sea outside”, is the open ocean. Stay in your own waters.
  • “Respeta mi bandera”Respect my flagThe line where the metaphor stops being about fish.
  • “Si lo ven que viene, palo al tiburón”If you see it coming, a stick for the sharkPalo, a stick or a club, is also Caribbean slang for a beating. The band's rallying cry.
  • “no se duerme el camarón”In the Caribbean, the shrimp doesn't sleepA twist on a proverb, camarón que se duerme se lo lleva la corriente: “the shrimp that falls asleep gets carried off by the current”. The small ones are awake now.

Context

The shark is a metaphor. Rubén Blades wrote it about US intervention in Latin America, and the lyrics name “our sister El Salvador”, then in the middle of its civil war. It opens Canciones del Solar de los Aburridos (Fania, 1981), another album Blades made with Willie Colón.

It cost them. The song got little radio play in the US, and Blades became especially unpopular with Miami's Cuban exiles, who heard it as communist. Colón said in a 1991 interview that he and Blades sometimes played songs like this one and “Pedro Navaja” in bulletproof vests.

Blades called it an anti-imperialist song, but said it isn't only about the United States: it fits any big power that comes hunting in someone else's waters.

On the dance floor

Long, seven minutes, and it takes its time: the first part paints the sea, calm and bright, before the shark shows up.

Then the coro starts asking the shark what it's looking for, and in the second half the whole band shouts “palo al tiburón” while Blades fires back one line after another. The energy climbs all the way: that's where your big patterns go.

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, Rubén Blades.