David y Goliath

Annotation — Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs

Secondly, this LP had the track "David y Goliath", which is listed on the back of the LP as "David and Goliath (The Vietnamese Are Small)" by Carlos Puebla - born on 11 September 1917 in Manzanillo, Cuba and died on 12 July 1989, Havana, Cuba. He was known to be a key protest singer in the Cuban Nueva trova movement, looking at social movements and politics. He was noted to have sided with Fidel Castro prior to the revolution, and was a supporter of Che Guevara. A live version of this song, called "Los Vietnamitas / I vietnamiti" featured on the various artist compilation Generazione Vietnam (1975). He also released the Vietnam War songs "El ejemplo de Vietnam" and "La gloria para Viet Nam" on the 1973 album Carlos Puebla, featured on this list. Furthermore, he released the song "Y está despertando el negro" on the album Cuba: Songs for Our America, also discussed below. In the lyrics of this song, the narrator showed solidarity with the North Vietnamese side. It noted that the "yankees" were very big and well-equipped, with "military academies...bombs and rifles...bullets by the millions...". However, the US "don't have any hearts". In contrast, the narrator said that the Vietnamese were small, yet had big hearts, and thus why they were able to beat the US.

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Lyrics

English: "The yankees are pretty big guys / Some of them look like giants / And some like elephants / But they don't have any hearts / The Vietnamese are pretty small, pretty small yes / But with such hearts, like this, big like this / The yankees have lots of cannons, cannons by the thousands and military academies / But they don't have any hearts / The yankees have airplanes, they have bombs and rifles, and bullets by the millions / But they don't have hearts / The yankees have big piles of gunship helicopters, they have ships and mortors / But they don't have any hearts / That's why so many times they are knocked out by the Vietnamese / People who are very small / But yet, they have the hearts!"

Notes

Also known as David and Goliath (The Vietnamese Are Small)

About the artist

born on 11 September 1917 in Manzanillo, Cuba and died on 12 July 1989, Havana, Cuba

Themes

Anti-War · Anti-Imperialism · Vietnamese Perspective · Vietnamese Patriotic

In collections

Latin & Central American, & Caribbean Music · Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs [War Years]