Between skin and air: naïveté and melodic reason (and some winds) in the songs of L.A. Spinetta

Abstract

This article reflects on Luis Alberto Spinetta’s oeuvre taking the insistent presence of the wind in his lyrics as a trigger. From the symbolic or metaphoric possibilities this presence suggests, the article puts forward the idea of a deliberate naïveté as a figure for the philosophical potential not only in Spinetta’s oeuvre but also more generally in the song as an artform. Based on a consideration of the lullaby as a possible song model, in opposition and contrast to the model of the protest song, the article concludes by suggesting deliberate naïveté as a space that Spinetta’s oeuvre builds and inhabits, which in turn opens the way to consider the concept of melodic reason as the particular mode in which songs in general, and Spinetta’s work in particular, acquire their particular (and paradoxical) dimension of thought.