Progressive songs: The Eighth Day

The AOL Journal Progressive Musings has a few posts about political songs, and they reminded me of this one in particular. It's called "Octavo Día" (Eighth Day) by Shakira Mebarak (better known as just Shakira), the Columbian singer who combines Latin musical traditions with Middle Eastern influences she learned from her Lebanese-descended father.

I like her music for more than one reason. But this song is striking in using subtle theological themes to make a social-protest song that comes out remarkably beautiful. She must have written the lyrics when she was 20 or 21.

The song is about how, on the eighth day after creation, God decided to go off from earth and "take a walk through space." He doesn't come back for a while, which is itself an interesting use of something that sounds like the Christian notion of the "absence of God" (although for all I know she's Muslim). When He returns:

Who would have thought that this same God, on returning
Would find everything in a hellish mess
And that He would become just another unemployed person
Among the number that is growing yearly, non-stop?

Since His return, God's been walking the streets of earth, looking patiently but unsuccessfully "for someone with whom He can at least hold a pleasant conversation." While "here below, a few manipulate us like chess pieces" and "even a blind man can see it."

The final verses are a comment on the cult of celebrity in today's world. If God decides to leave earth again because He gets too lonely or can't find a job:

It would be our ruin and we would have no other choice
But to worship Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or Tarzan

The song was originally released on her album Dónde Están Los Ladrones? It's also featured on the Shakira MTV Unplugged album and DVD, the latter of which has English subtitles, which I used here.

Oh, she's gorgeous, too, another recommendation for the DVD version.

Tags: shakira, shakira mebarak