The fifth track on Travesura is "La tarara."

The first track being an instrumental, it follows that if one is playing the compact disc straight through, "La tarara" is the fourth song, the fourth track with vocals.

It will immediately sound different because none of the Inti-Illimani voices are singing it, although the band's instrumentalists rally around in a tasteful, affectionate arrangement.

Diego "El Cigala," a flamenco singer of some note, is the guest artist, and he does the singing all by himself. He sounds like nobody else on this recording.

Because "La tarara" will not be in the US Public Domain before the year 2057, according to the online Petrucci Music Library, I hesitate to print even the lyrics here. The compiler who collected a series of children's songs, then mixed them together to suit himself, is none other than Federico García Lorca; the lyric is published with music by Union Musica Española.

This modest tune about a girl dancing and her skirts swaying around and catching the poet's eye (if my Spanish counts for anything) has been recorded more than once. Significantly, one of the many record albums by the late flamenco singer, El Camarón de la Isla, includes La tarara. This is a singer to whom other singers listen closely, and it is not surprising that Diego "El Cigala" 's vocal is reminiscent of Camarón's style of singing.

Horacio Salinas tells his own tale. He says that where he grew up, in a somewhat rural part of Chile, the family house, modest though it was, had a piano, with sheet music on it; and García Lorca's "La Tarara" was one of the pieces, and was often sung by his family in the house. So Salinas had personal reasons to associate this song with childhood.

When Diego "El Cigala" happened to be visiting Chile during Inti-Illimani's recording process, the singer and Salinas were introduced and spoke hastily about what he might sing with them. According to Salinas, he himself mentioned the folksong to the singer, who replied (in Spanish): Very good, everybody else has recorded this song except for me already, so we can do that one.