|
NormanKliman -> "surprising" letras (Jun. 20 2009 10:30:06)
|
In Spain, 20 June (today) is officially dedicated to the Spanish language. I'm not sure if that's the case in any other Spanish-speaking countries, but I thought it would be a good reason to post some examples of politically incorrect verse, just to give people an idea of how these letras are nothing more than traditional verse. There are cultural differences that don't translate well, so if anyone feels offended, please take my word for it that nobody sings these letras with the intention of being racist or obscene.
I hadn't realized it, but these examples are concentrated in the recordings of El Gloria and La Niña de los Peines, although there are others. It's important to remember the circumstances of the times of these artists. We often think of liberal non-conformist thinking as a post-WWII phenomenon (the beatniks, the hippies), but the generation that saw the Spanish civil war was so far out there that they nearly tore apart their own society. In art, we can find examples of this in music, literature, cinema, painting and sculpture, and obviously other fields like politics and ideology were similarly shaken up. What I'm trying to say is that human rights, alternative lifestyles and fraternity are not recent developments in Spain, so nobody should feel offended by these letras.
El Niño Gloria (Rafael Ramos Antúnez) seems to have the lion's share of scandalous letras. He was born in Jerez (c/Nueva, like Terremoto and Morao) in 1893 and worked the fields as a young man (like Tío Borrico). Toward the end of the 1920s, he moved to the "Alameda de Hércules" area of Seville, as did several other Jerez-based artists like María La Moreno and Manuel Torre. These artists may very well have taken with them certain cantes that were developed in the following decades, especially bulerías por soleá. He made a few recordings between 1929 and 1931, but the Spanish civil war pretty much ruined his promising career, and they say that he died in absolute poverty at some point in the 1950s.
Here's a link to the letras and two audio files of bulerías provided by the Centro Andaluz de Flamenco. Both were recorded in 1929:
http://flun.cica.es/flamenco_y_universidad/BDatos/consulta.BDatos.php?interprete=EL+GLORIA&a_edicion=%25&n_disco=&formato=%25&palo=BULER%CDAS&estilo=%25&t_cante=&guitarrista=
Not sure of the exact meaning of this one, but it sounds like a crazy all-nighter to me:
Ay, ¿qué me has hecho?
guárdame los limones
que tienes en el pecho
What have you done to me?
Put away those lemons
that you've got on your chest
The Zambo brothers recorded this one on that great all-bulería CD they made a few years ago with Moraíto. Some singers mumble or omit the reference to Catalonia.
Al atravesar un barranco
dijo un negro con afán:
Dios mío, quién fuera blanco
aunque fuera catalán
Upon crossing a gully
a black man said obsessively
"My God, to be white
even if it meant being Catalonian"
This one could be the worst-sounding of all, although I think the way to interpret it is that everyone stinks.[:D] Manuel Vallejo recorded it around the same time as El Gloria.
Las negras huelen a queso
las mulatitas a aceitunas
y las señoritas blancas
huelen a piña madura
Black women smell like cheese
mulatto women smell like olives
and white girls
smell like ripe pineapple
La Niña de los Peines (Pastora Pavón Cruz) was no stranger to controversy. She began singing in public at a very early age in her natal Seville (b. 1890), and she performed professionally in a venue in Madrid when she was just nine years old. Gypsy girls and women are usually not allowed such freedom by their protective families, but this family was in need of money because the father, a blacksmith, had fallen ill. She posed for the painter Zuloaga in Bilbao around 1903, and a few years later was hired to perform in a venue in Jerez de la Frontera. Aside from all the travelling, independence and career opportunities, she had a series of romances that were not successful until she married the non-gypsy singer Pepe Pinto in 1933, when she was 43 years old. During the Spanish civil war, she supported the Republic by singing for the troops and even posing for photos with them. Imagine what kind of position that left her in when Franco's fascist forces won the war. They say that, years later, Franco attended one of her theater performances and went backstage to meet the artists. He greeted her by her first name and she supposedly looked up, wincing, and said, "You know who I am?" to which he responded, "Of course! Everyone knows who Pastora is!" In any case, she certainly led an unusual lifestyle for an "uneducated" gypsy woman. Some of her letras seem to ridicule the status quo.
The first three are from her famous bulería de Cádiz recorded with Melchor in 1950. (She first recorded this letra at a fast soleá tempo in 1917 with Currito el de La Jeroma.) I wonder what Franco thought about the line "mire usted qué gracia tiene este país."
Cai es una población
que le gusta al forastero
aquí no sirve alegría
lo que sirve es el dinero
Cadiz is a town
that out-of-towners love
happiness isn't worth anthing here
what counts is having money
Con el caray, que caray, caray,
¡qué fiesta más grande
van a hacer en Cai!
que las hambres las vamos a sentir
que mire usted qué gracia
tiene este país
Oh, caray, caray, caray
What a great party
they're going to have in Cadiz!
We're going to go hungry.
What a funny country this is!
Habrá frijones pegaos
y en las casas de los vecinos
y habrá chuleta empaná
cuando vengan los maridos
There will be left-over beans
in the houses of the neighborhood
And when the husbands come home from work
they'll get breaded pork chops
This one's from "Por los balcones del cielo," which has got some of the best singing I've heard in my life. It's a Christmas bulería, and what makes it sound scandalous is the word "mentira" which isn't as negative sounding in Spanish as it is in English. Pastora was profoundly religious and was probably not making any kind of statement with this letra.
Esta noche nace el Niño...
Y es mentira, que no nace
estas son las ceremonias
que tós los años le hacen
Tonight's the night that Jesus is born
and it's a lie, he's not really born tonight
These are just the ceremonies
that they hold every year in his honor
Here's one of my favorites, because she's poking fun at those of us who speak Spanish with a foreign accent.
Una vez que de un inglés
procedente de Londón,
Me dice: «-Ay, beri güé.
Báilese usted el garrotón.»
Once an Englishman
who came from London
said to me, "Very well.
Now dance the garrotón."
I've never heard of anyone expressing their surprise over this one, but I can't help thinking that it must have irritated some of the Franco regime's more fervent religious fanatics in 1947, when she recorded this with Melchor. I can't seem to find a reliable reference, but I'm pretty sure that the Spanish Inquisition wasn't entirely dismantled until the 19th or 20th century and that, toward the end, its officially recognized duties included censorship. In my mind, this letra packs a powerful punch, insofar as a study of human nature, but I might be reading more into it than is actually there.
A Dios no quiero,
Ay, mientras que viva
mi compañero
I don't love God
as long as
my companion is alive
|
|
|
|
