Subject: ADD: Missing (Peggy Segger)
From:
Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Nov 12 - 03:02 AM
From The Peggy Seeger Songbook with notes
Jim Carroll
MISSING
1 met Berenice Dockendorff at a benefit for Chilean refugees in 1987. She came backstage after the concert to tell me about her sister, Murielita, who had been "disappeared" at the age of twenty-two by the Pinochet government in 1974. I visited Berenice and her mother, Ana Maria Navarrete, who spoke almost no English and felt lost in Britain. The interview was harrowing. 'Disappear' is a very exact term for what happens. The authorities remove every official trace of a person's existence: hospital records, school reports, driver's license, birth certificate, exam results, degrees, and so on. Pinochet himself told Ana Maria that she was deluded—that she had really only borne one daughter. For seven years, Berenice and Ana Maria followed what came to be a routine for the relatives of vanished people. They went every Sunday to demonstrate at the Moneda, the main government building in Santiago. They carried Murielita's photograph pinned to their clothing, showing it to people in bus queues and shops with the question, "Have you seen this woman?" They followed rumours that led them to prisons and hospitals all over Chile but Murielita was never found. In 1980 it became too dangerous and they moved to London. Ana Maria now works at a medical centre for Latin American women. In 1992 she was interviewed for a television documentary in which she said, "The other day I was watching a comedy programme and for the first time ever, I understood an English joke. Can you imagine? I was so pleased!"
The melody is improvised anew each time I sing it—it is impossible to notate.
alternative title: "Murielita
I had a little sparrow, my little bird, Murielita;
I held her in my womb, my heart sang to her;
I opened my hand, she flew into the daylight, singing—
Now my little bird is gone.
The hunters caught her, caged her, Murielita;
They held her in their hands and still she sang of dawn;
They closed their hands, they closed their hands—
My little bird is gone.
I went to San Miguel, I stood and stood and stood outside the cage.
The prisoners have seen her, the soldiers have seen her,
But the jailers say she never flew, she never sang, never was she born, she never was—
Where are you, where are you, little bird?
Seven years have I followed the echoes and whispers,
Murielita, Can you hear me, little bird?
And still we come to the Moneda, we stand, we wait, we ask, we plead,
Have you seen my little bird?
See, here is her photo, Murielita;
His picture, Carlos, Manuel;
Her likeness, Violeta, Rosario, Maria;
Give me back my little bird!
My child, your clothes are ready, your books are still open;
We seek you by day, by night we call your name.
Everywhere we hold your picture high, that someone may see and tell us who took you,
But the answer is the same: no one saw, no one heard, no one knew.
No one knew.
I had a little sparrow, her hair was golden brown, my heart was in her hands.
She sang of tomorrow, but will she see tomorrow?
The generals tore off her wings, my little sparrow fell,
And even God—even God—even God cannot find her—
Chinita, little girl, Murielita . . .
I will sing your song for you, I will sing—
Can you hear me, little bird? Can you hear me little bird?
Music note: This song posed a unique problem. I had heard a Sicilian folksong which consisted of an ever-changing melody backed by a recurring pattern of four chords. I knew I was going to set the new song into this format. When the text of "Missing" was more or less finalised, I placed the song in E minor and used the Sicilian chord pattern in \: one bar each of D, G, B7, and Em. I thought it would be simple to just play the chords and let the voice wander. It wasn't. I just couldn't do the two together. So I recorded five minutes' worth of the chord pattern: D, G, B7, Em over and over again. I put the cassette into the car stereo and every time I got into the car I switched it on and improvised a tune with the text. When I started this routine, I frequently found myself driving to places I hadn't planned to go, but when I could both reach my planned destination and the end of the song without mishap, I thought "Fine. Now I can sing it." But when I picked up the guitar to play the chords, I lost the ability to improvise the singing. Not fine. So I decided to read the newspaper out loud while playing the chords, making sure that I really understood what I was reading, thus divorcing my mind from my fingers. I held conversations while playing the chords, then graduated to reading poetry while playing the chords. After a month I was finally able to sing the song while playing the chords. I shouldn't think the guy who sang the Sicilian song had all that trouble.
See also "In Particular," the "Radio Ballads" section.
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