León Gieca is a new name to me, and no doubt to you, but in his South American homeland he is a legend, revered as “the Argentine Bob Dylan.”

Not just for his folk-influenced songs, but for his socially and politically informed lyrics. Especially these ones.

Not being fluent in Spanish – I gave up after a year, having struggled to read Cervantes’ Don Quixote in his native language – I can’t vouch for the lyrical content here. But I’ve read up about it.

Written at the height (or depth) of the brutal military dictatorship in the early Eighties, it is a critique of the regime’s systematic destruction of education and arts.

The direct motivation for the song was the the closure of university in 1979, as part of a broader crackdown on academic freedom, student activism and “subversive” thought.

Just a week after Gieco debuted the song live, armed soldiers were sent to Gieco’s home, arrested him and brought him to a military barracks for interrogation.

During his ordeal an army general placed a handgun on the desk and gave Gieco an ultimatum: stop singing that song or leave the country immediately, naming the kindergarten Gieco’s young daughter attended.

Despite the threat, Gieco went on to record the song, albeit with a verse explicitly condemning the university closure was censored from its release – though Gieco bravely continued to sing the full version at underground gigs.

I didn’t get the story behind the song, which I heard on David Byrne’s latest radio show devoted to Argentine music, but I love the musical style, with its emphasis on the off-beat like cumbia and conjunto, reggae and rai.

Like many Argies (as I’m sure we shouldn’t call them), Gieco was born into a family of Italian origin in rural Argentina and bought his first guitar (on credit) at the age of eight, joining his father’s band before joining a rock band called Los Moscos (aka ‘The Flies’).

His music captured the spirit of protest against the dictatorship, and songs calling for change like En el País de la Libertad (“In the Country of Freedom”) were censored by the government.

He was regularly forced to change lyrics and remove verses from songs but his popularity grew in Argentina and other countries of South America and in 1981 he embarked on an ambitious three-year 110,000-kilometre-long tour of Argentina, playing for a total of 420,000 people.