Tarta Relena Tamarindo (2024)
A tamarind tree grows beside a well, standing as a silent witness to a deer giving birth to five fawns. But only four are nursed by their mother; the fifth eventually dies and is buried beneath the tree. A little sparrow arrives and warns: “Life is short, but thirst—and the well—are infinite.”
This tale reflects on the cycle of life and death, and the quiet persistence of nature and time. It is told in the ethereal song “Tamarindo” by Tarta Relena, a Catalan vocal duo formed in 2016 by Helena Ros and Marta Torrella. The song was inspired by Chaitanya Tamhane’s film The Disciple.
“Tamarindo” sounds otherworldly—more than you might expect (and no, autotune alone isn’t to blame). Here’s why: during the recording process, a file of the song was accidentally played in reverse. Struck by the eerie beauty of this “wrong” version, the duo learned to sing the lyrics phonetically backwards.
The result was “Odniramat” (that’s “Tamarindo” spelled backwards), which appears on Tarta Relena’s 2024 LP És pregunta. But Ros and Torrella didn’t stop there: they reversed the backward version—creating “Tamarindo” anew. This twice-inverted version also appears on the same LP, and it is our song of the day.
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