Welcome to one of the most active flamenco sites on the Internet. Guests can read most posts but if you want to participate click here to register.
This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods, David Serva and Tom Blackshear who went ahead of us.
We receive 12,200 visitors a month from 200 countries and 1.7 million page impressions a year. To advertise on this site please contact us.
|
|
|
"surprising" letras
|
You are logged in as Guest
|
|
Users viewing this topic: none
|
|
Login  | |
|
   
NormanKliman
Posts: 1143
Joined: Sep. 1 2007
|
 "surprising" letras
|
|
|
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.  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
_____________________________
Be here now.
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Jun. 20 2009 10:30:06
 |
|
NormanKliman
Posts: 1143
Joined: Sep. 1 2007
|
|
RE: "surprising" letras (in reply to edguerin)
|
|
|
Hi Ed,
quote:
What do you think?
Okay, this starts to get really dry and academic, but I'm responding because you asked for it.
quote:
is unambiguous AFAIK: "keep those ... for me"
The pronoun "me" ("guárdame") is sometimes added to involve the speaker in a way that is not related to the action of the verb. In this case, the idea might be, "Do me a favor and..."
The meaning of "guardar" is usually "to put something back in its original place" rather than "to save something for later," although both are possible.
In any case, this verse is pretty strange. I'd like to point out that nobody has accurately transcribed all of El Gloria's letras, mostly because of the audio quality of his recordings and also because of his pronunciation. For example, in this case, it sounds more like he says "¿Qué me han hecho?" (What have they done to me?) and "Guardar los limones" (without the pronoun). Here are two more examples from El Gloria (both available for listening and reading at the link I posted):
Cuando en la calle me veas
no me mires ni te rías
te das cuenta que estoy muerto
o que tú a mí no me querias,
When you see me in the street
don't look at me and don't laugh
Just think of me as a dead man
or that you never really loved me
Pasó como yo lo ví
consecuencia del secreto
de haber estao yo alli
It happened just as I saw it
which is the result of the secret
of me having being there
In the first example (brilliant bulería, BTW), I don't hear him saying the word "muerto" or anything similar. I think the second example is accurate, but he's either playing with the pronunciation of "consecuencia" or wasn't familiar with the word.
quote:
If you're poor (and poverty was very real in Spain), then cheese, olives, pineapples probably all are wonderful ..
Yeah, that's true!
quote:
Sounds more like "it's a lie he wasn't born ... " to me
The verse uses the present tense ("nace"), as well as the adverbial phrase "Esta noche," clearly indicating enactment or representation of some kind. Rejection of the whole concept (atheism) would require "no nació" or "nunca nació." The word "mentira" is used really generally, as in a false moustache or the money used in the board game Monopoly ("de mentira").
Here are two more that I forgot to include in the original post. The first one is part of a book-CD on a singer who died a couple of years ago. I'm not sure if it's going to be published (not my project). I'm not at all happy with the translation of this letra, to say the least, but it's the best I could do. There's nothing scandalous about it, but, let's just say that the original version is like Chaplin and the translation is like The Three Stooges.
Mira que buena es mi mare
Me ha hecho unos calzoncillos
De unos viejos de mi pare
Look how good my mother is
She made me underpants
from an old pair of my father’s
I suppose the supreme challenge would be translating this letra (part of Chaqueta's romeras):
A revolcarme
a revolcarme
en un capote
que huele a carne
(I'll) roll around
in a cape
that smells like meat
_____________________________
Be here now.
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Jun. 21 2009 23:56:58
|
|
Estevan
Posts: 1936
Joined: Dec. 20 2006
From: Torontolucía
|
|
RE: "surprising" letras (in reply to val)
|
|
|
quote:
Me casé con un enano, salerito
pa jartarme de reir.
Pa jartarme de reir,
le puse la cama en alto,
ole salerito y ole,
le puse la cama en alto, salerito,
y no se pudo subir.
Y eso sí que fue de veras,
que al bajarse de la cama,
ole salerito y ole,
que al bajarse de la cama, salerito
se cayó en la escupidera.
Hi Val, Google translators don't yet do dialect!
'Pa jartarme de reir' would be 'Para hartarme de reir' in standard Spanish, meaning something like 'In order to have a good laugh', (really to laugh so much you're sick of it) or the internet term LMAO would be quite appropriate here.
I married a midget so that I'd LMAO
So that I'd LMAO
I put the bed really high
and he couldn't get up onto it
And what really happened
is that when he got down from the bed
he fell in the spittoon.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Um, hilarious.
 
_____________________________
Me da igual. La música es música.
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Jun. 26 2009 10:03:18
|
|
srshea
Posts: 833
Joined: Oct. 29 2006
From: Olympia, WA in the Great Pacific Northwest
|
|
RE: "surprising" letras (in reply to NormanKliman)
|
|
|
Good stuff, everybody!
Thanks for the scoop on El Gloria, Norman. His name always pops up in Rito y Geografia, when interviewees rattle of their list of past greats, but I’ve been frustrated in my attempts to find much info about him (in English, anyway), and commercially available recordings are scarce.
I think another factor that makes a too literal interpretation of letras a bit dicey is the pastiche nature in which they’re put together in a given performance. A single letra can have its own obscurities and double meanings, but when you start mixing and matching different letras, it seems like you can end up with all kinds of “mixed messages”.
This common FdH close seems contradictory:
Arrimate ay, gitana mia
Que yo sin ti no puedo vivir
Vivir sin ti yo no puedo mas
Ay gitana mia me vas a matar
Quitate del sol que te quema
Quitate del sol que te pone
Que la carita morena
My Spanish isn’t strong enough to offer my own translation, but the gist as understand it is “Come to me my gypsy girl, I can’t live without you, blah blah” in the first part, but then “If you stay out in the sun too long you’re gonna end up a little too "dark"” in the second part (I know I’m being a bit crude and grossly approximate in my interpretation….). Since these are fandangos letras, I'm assuming they're of non-gitano origin, so that second part is potentially offensive?
Maybe I’m not getting it quite right, but it seems like these two sentiments don’t quite match up, though it’s not uncommon for love song type lyrics to be both affectionate and condescending at once.
Am I way off on any of this?
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Jun. 27 2009 14:35:14
|
|
NormanKliman
Posts: 1143
Joined: Sep. 1 2007
|
|
RE: "surprising" letras (in reply to srshea)
|
|
|
Nice letras from everyone!
Maybe someone could start another thread on favorite letras, instead of us dwelling on the potentially conflictive ones. 
quote:
His name always pops up in Rito y Geografia...
Hi Adam,
María Torre sings with a similar voice in the episode on Manuel Torre's family in Seville, and it sounds to me like Mairena is trying to make his voice sound like that in his bulería "El camino de Jerez" (el pollito que piaba...)
quote:
Am I way off on any of this?
There's very rarely a "message" formed by the combination of different letras. Singers choose letras for at least two different reasons: (1) because of the way the syllables fit the melody/compás, and, (2) when the singer is very good and knows several different letras that fit the cante well, because of some connection to the creator of that cante or the artist who made it popular (a "nod" to another artist). Enrique Morente said not too long ago that letras are like a hook to hang the cante on. I think the word he actually used was "clothes hanger" but the metaphor was that of hanging a painting on a wall. Anyway, there are exceptions (and not just romances), but letras are usually unrelated.
Your translation was close enough, IMO, although I'd point out that in the original version there's no mention of "too" dark, insofar as surpassing a limit, and all it says is that the sun's going to make her face dark. So, you're asking if the meaning of the letra has to do with a non-gypsy man expressing his aversion to dark skin? I would say that it doesn't, for a few reasons:
First, as I mentioned in another post, in some parts of Andalusia it seems that most people's family trees include gypsies and non-gypsies, so racism of this kind doesn't make much sense. Second, I don't know if most gypsies are actually dark skinned (e.g., Diego del Gastor, Joselero, Antonio Mairena, Melchor de Marchena, Tomás Pavón, the Sorderas, the Zambos, the Moneos...) Third, the meaning may be entirely metaphorical, as in the man not wanting the woman to have much social contact because it might change her feelings for him. If the letra literally referred to her skin color, it would be of very poor artistic quality, IMO, and I think it's more likely that the meaning is metaphorical.
So, returning to the underlying idea of this thread, due to cultural differences arising from the use of the language, some letras might be considered offensive by those of us who weren't born and raised in Spain.
_____________________________
Be here now.
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Jun. 28 2009 0:21:43
|
|
Sufimoor
Posts: 8
Joined: May 4 2009
|
 RE: "surprising" letras (in reply to NormanKliman)
|
|
|
Greetings Fellow Flamencos.
I hope the sheer proliferation of "surprising" or "offensive" letras didn't upset you, Norman. For all the Flamenco stuff everyone talks about on this forum, it seems most of us have forgotten that most of these people led and lived what we westerners (and maybe even some Spaniards) would call "bad lives."
I have a CD containing Cante Jondo from singers who are doing time in prison in Spain for murder (by the way, that same prison holds a "cante jondo" contest every year and gives out prizes!!). There have also been many stories about Flamencos who have come over to the US and other places to perform and have been arrested for various infractions of the law. Sometimes we forget that as talented as these individuals are, they are, in fact, "human."
That being said, I was in a Bulerias De Jerez workshop this past fall, and as all of us guitar students were going over the chords to some letras the cantaor was belching out, this one popped out of nowhere (2nd Letra):
Porque quise divertirme
Yo habia entra'ito en una casa mala
Me presentan a una dama
Frio como el marmol me quede
Cuando vi que era mi hermana.
Roughly, the passage translates to the cantaor going to a whore house because he wanted to have fun, he was presented a girl, but his face turned to stone (or cold like stone) when the girl presented to him was his sister!!
You could not believe the shock on my face alternating between A,C, & B-flat chords during this letra and hearing this!! Everyone in the workshop started cracking up, but folks, again, this stuff is not Science-Fiction, most of these Flamencos have had "bad lives," and it at times manifests itself in the letras.
Something to think about the next time you hear one of these "wellsprings of creativity" coming from these amazing cantaors....
_____________________________
"Oh Gypsy woman you're a moor- a moor from the moorish district."
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Jan. 12 2010 13:35:11
|
|
Sufimoor
Posts: 8
Joined: May 4 2009
|
 RE: "surprising" letras (in reply to Kate)
|
|
|
Sorry Kate, your Johnny Cash example is completely wrong - Johnny Cash was singing that song in third person - anyone even remotely familiar with the song knows that immediately.
And since FLAMENCO FROM GRANADA is your signature, then you should very well know the history of the struggles and hardships that the Gypsies in Spain have been through, and yes, those struggles and hardships do at times manifest itself in the lyrics; this is why I used the phrase "at times" (towards the end of my post).
So my statements were NOT stereotypes, and it isn't necessary for me to use caution, eh? You simply need to familiarize yourself more with Flamenco's history - contrary to popular belief, it is not all "Happy-Happy Joy-Joy" Cante Chico with flowers, polka-dot skirts, and letras about sipping Sherry in Jerez...
But being FLAMENCO FROM GRANADA, you already knew all of this, right?
Until we meet again in the Flamenco Stratosphere.....
_____________________________
"Oh Gypsy woman you're a moor- a moor from the moorish district."
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Jan. 13 2010 13:42:12
|
|
X
Posts: 72
Joined: May 21 2009
|
|
RE: "surprising" letras (in reply to NormanKliman)
|
|
|
rmj: I stand corrected. Thanks.
Kate: Your Johnny Cash quote makes me think: if we can have roc en español, why not bulerias in English? (OK, everyone else calm down and hold off on the brickbats and pitchforks-- it's just a blue sky notion).
Here's a letra from "Sam Hall" in your Johnny Cash vein that might work, because, Lord help me, I do see some burla in it that a good singer might be able bring out:
Well, I killed a man, 'tis said, so 'tis said
Yeah, I shot him in the head
Just to fill his mind with lead
And I left him there for dead
Damn his eyes, damn his eyes.
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Jan. 13 2010 14:01:24
|
|
 New Messages |
 No New Messages |
 Hot Topic w/ New Messages |
 Hot Topic w/o New Messages |
 Locked w/ New Messages |
 Locked w/o New Messages |
|
Post New Thread
Reply to Message
Post New Poll
Submit Vote
Delete My Own Post
Delete My Own Thread
Rate Posts
|
|
|
Forum Software powered by ASP Playground Advanced Edition 2.0.5
Copyright © 2000 - 2003 ASPPlayground.NET |
0.09375 secs.
|
Printable Version
