By RAÚL G.
The podcast currently has 36 episodes available.
Franco Battiato fue muchas cosas: un nómada, un explorador, un estudioso de las culturas antiguas o, como él mismo se definió: un “viajero profesional” y un “proletario del espíritu”.
El amor por las culturas y tradiciones antiguas es una presencia constante en las letras de Battiato, un italiano de Sicilia que cantó también en español, entre otros idiomas. Este hecho le permitiría alcanzar una gran popularidad en España durante los años 80, gracias a temas ya clásicos como La estación de los amores, Centro de gravedad permanente o la canción de nuestro episodio: la maravillosa Yo quiero verte danzar.
En este track #3 del álbum Nómadas (1987), el cantante nos lleva de viaje por muy diversas geografías mientras nos invita a participar en “ritos tribales” y a danzar con derviches sirios, gitanos del desierto, bailarines búlgaros o irlandeses del norte.
¿Estás listo para el viaje? Pues ponte las zapatillas rojas y… let’s dance!
*****
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The song Vuela, vuela was released by Mexican boy band Magneto in 1991. It’s still the group’s most remembered song, and the one that propelled them, rocket-like, into international stardom.
The song was a version of the French original Voyage, voyage, by the singer Desireless. The French lyrics were loosely translated into Spanish (‘loosely’ is to put it mildly, but the new words worked nicely enough) for Magneto's version.
En ambas versiones, se trata de una canción escapista, que en ese aspecto nos recuerda al Don’t Worry, Be happy de Bobby McFerrin, que aparecía unos tres años antes, en el 88.
Vuela, vuela se convirtió en un éxito internacional en 1991 durante 14 semanas en 20 países, incluidos España y Estados Unidos, donde ya en los años 90 había un importante mercado latino (o, como nosotros preferimos llamarlo, hispanohablante).
Parte del éxito radicaba en la coreografía de la canción, de movimientos simples y memorables que recordaban a las artes marciales; como si el coreógrafo hubiera sido Daniel LaRusso o el señor Miyagi, otros grandes iconos populares de la época…
*****
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You can give us some love with a one-off donation at Buy Me a Coffee. Your support is much appreciated and will help me keep creating new episodes.
Check out also my Instagram for comments, news and to see some of my artwork. (Yes, I do that too). If you would like to take Spanish lessons with me, send me a Direct Message there.
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Hoy hablamos del tema Comunión de Señor Chinarro, la banda de rock indie del sevillano Antonio Luque. La canción pertenece a su disco Cal Viva, publicado en abril de este año.
As the story goes, Antonio was one day looking at some old family photos and he came across a picture of his First Communion. The sacrament of la Primera Comunión is a ceremony often carried out collectively, so in the photo he could see not only himself but many of his schoolmates, too.
This takes our singer into a bittersweet trip through memory lane. As he reminisces about his childhood friends and wonders whatever happened to Consuelo, Amparo, María del Mar or that big crush who for some reason is not in the picture, a song starts taking shape in his head. It will be a melancholy rumination, very much in the Chinarro vein, on the passage of time, loss, oblivion and possibly the ultimate futility of life.
Para el episodio hemos invitado a mi prima Martina, que en el momento de la grabación está a punto de hacer su Primera Comunión. Martina nos habla sobre el significado, a su entender, de este importante evento en la vida de los niños españoles.
*****
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Las letras de la formación madrileña Un pingüino en mi ascensor (A Penguin in my Lift) exploran temas y elementos de la vida cotidiana con un tono satírico, mordaz y (como sugiere el nombre de la banda) a menudo con un marcado punto surrealista.
*****
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You can give us some love with a one-off donation at Buy Me a Coffee. Your support is much appreciated and will help me keep creating new episodes.
Check out also my Instagram for comments, news and to see some of my artwork. (Yes, I do that too). If you would like to take Spanish lessons with me, send me a Direct Message there.
Finally, follow and rate us on Spotify or whichever platform you use to listen to the show.
With Fernando Márquez “el Zurdo” as vocalist, the Spanish band La Mode made only two albums. The first one came out in 1982 and is a masterpiece called El eterno femenino. The album’s title was apparently a quote from Goethe’s Faust. Lofty art references abound in La Mode’s lyrics.
El tema número 3 de El eterno femenino lleva por título Aquella canción de Roxy. That Roxy song.
En la canción se nos cuenta una historia; una historia de amor. Como se anuncia ya en el título, la ficticia banda sonora corre a cargo del grupo británico Roxy Music, uno de los más influyentes de la segunda mitad de los años 70, y referencia explícita en el presente tema de La Mode.
No sabemos qué canción de Roxy exactamente es la que suena en “el transistor” durante el encuentro amoroso narrado por el Zurdo. ¿Quizá Love is the drug? Es muy posible… Pero eso queda para la imaginación de cada oyente. Each listener is to decide which Roxy song precisely is the one that the singer-narrator is telling us about.
Aquella canción de Roxy is a treatise in some punk and New Wave’s recurrent themes: the night, the thrill, the sleaze, the cruising for a bruising, the fleetingness of love and of youth itself... And there is Mr. Roxy Man himself, Brian Ferry, giving his blessing to our two young lovers, as well as providing the incidental music to their torrid affair.
*****
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Nins fue uno de varios grupos infantiles que tuvieron una gran popularidad en España entre finales de los años 70 y principios de los 80. Otros grupos de este estilo fueron Regaliz, (Liquorice), Botones (Buttons) and, most popular of them all, Parchís (Ludo).
Today many probably remember Nins for performing the opening theme song of the animated series Sherlock Holmes, which aired in Spain in the mid 80's.
La serie de dibujos animados fue una coproducción italo-japonesa. Los seis primeros episodios los dirigió Hayao Miyazaki, quien poco después sería el fundador, junto con Isao Takahata, de Studio Ghibli, uno de los mejores estudios de animación del mundo.
Para Sherlock Holmes, Miyazaki y sus animadores se basaron en el célebre personaje de Arthur Conan Doyle, y crearon un total de 26 episodios. En los países de habla inglesa, la serie se tituló Sherlock Hound – a play on words with the detective's surname: in the show, all characters were anthropomorphised dogs.
Nins’ opening theme managed to include in its lyrics quite a few highly recognisable Holmes attributes - su lupa, su pipa, su gabán, etc. - in a song that is not even 2 minutes long, and that is also very catchy.
*****
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You can give us some love with a one-off donation at Buy Me a Coffee. Your support is much appreciated and will help me keep creating new episodes.
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Finally, follow and rate us on Spotify or whichever platform you use to listen to the show.
It’s 1942 and it’s a grim time in Spain. An atrocious civil war has ended just three years ago and the country is mired in poverty and misery.
En un país en tal situación, una canción sobre cadáveres y esqueletos no parecía tan lejos de la realidad de cada día como nos podría parecer hoy.
Aun así, nuestro tema musical para este episodio pronto se hizo tremendamente popular en España, un país donde un poco de humor negro nos ha ayudado siempre a soportar las adversidades. La canción consiguió viajar a través de las décadas, y hoy es ya parte del folclore musical español.
Hablamos de Rascayú (o Raska Yu), del cantante mallorquín Bonet de San Pedro.
A pesar de su popularidad (o a causa de ella), el régimen del general Franco censuró el divertido tema: se prohibió su emisión por la radio. Esto puede ser difícil de entender (o no) cuando miramos un poco la letra. ¿Por qué se decidió censurar una canción aparentemente banal e inofensiva? ¿Podría ser que el Rascayú del título, “el viejo enterrador de la comarca”, fuera una referencia velada al dictador?
Las respuestas, en el episodio.
Art by Valentí Castanys, from the comic book El caso de Raska Yu.
*****
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Entre la numerosa población mexicana de Yakima Valley en el estado de Washington (EEUU), hay una gran afición general a la música tradicional de su país, lo que se denomina hoy el género regional mexicano. You could say that music is in the air there, a fundamental part of life in the community. Two young siblings, Mando and Jairo Martínez, inspired by some of their musician relatives, got good at their guitar playing, and decided to form a band. They called themselves Esencia Privada. Soon after, their then 13-year-old sister Yahritza surprised everyone in the family with her vocal talents, and the two musical siblings became three. Now they were Yahritza Y Su Esencia.
Yahritza Y Su Esencia became viral when they posted on TikTok a video of themselves playing Soy el único, a song Yahritza wrote when she was 13.
Soy el único es una balada de ruptura amorosa - it’s a break-up ballad. Yahritza, a sus 13 años, nunca había experimentado una ruptura amorosa. La cantante se inspiró en vídeos de TikTok donde chicos y chicas jóvenes hablaban de sus amores y desamores. Concretamente, escuchó a alguien decir la frase “no encontrarás a alguien mejor que yo” - ‘you won’t find anyone better than me’ -, and that phrase gave her the idea for the song.
Soy el único pronto se convirtió en el primer gran éxito del grupo. Este mismo mes de septiembre, los tres hermanos Martínez han recibido un Disco de Oro en México por la canción y uno de Diamante en los Estados Unidos. El vídeo oficial en YouTube lleva ya más de 81 millones de reproducciones… And counting.
*****
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Nuestra canción para este episodio es del año 1989 y se titula El límite. Es un tema de La frontera, un grupo de rock madrileño de gran éxito en España durante los años noventa.
Javier Andreu, Tony Marmota y los otros miembros integrantes del grupo se conocieron a principios de los 80 en la Facultad de Ciencias de la Información - Media Studies - mientras Andreu estudiaba publicidad (advertising) y Marmota y los otros periodismo (journalism). Todos ellos tocaban la guitarra, they all played guitar, so they decided to find a place to rehearse, instead of going to classes, and to form a band. Eventually they called themselves La frontera, after the title of one of their songs.
El límite es probablemente la canción más icónica del grupo, su tema más recordado - their most remembered song - y uno de los clásicos del rock español de los años noventa.
The song was a massive hit in the early 90’s and it really helped to put the band in the map of mainstream Spanish rock. Andreu has indeed claimed that he practically owes his career to this one song.
El límite es la primera canción de La Rosa de los vientos, un álbum de 1989 que incluye otros clásicos del grupo como Nacido para volar (born to fly away), La reina del ragtime o la ya citada Juan Antonio Cortés, que es el tema que cierra el disco.
El límite, de La Frontera: curiosamente, el nombre de la canción y del grupo en este caso son casi iguales – both words mean practically the same thing. El límite: the limit, the border, the boundary, or even the edge. La frontera: the frontier, the borderline, also the edge.
We can see the association with life on the edge, or living dangerously - a theme common to many of their songs.
The name La frontera makes us think also of frontier life and the far west, which has also been a great inspiration for the group, in terms of their aesthetics and the country and western flavour of much of their music, including their lyrics.
*****
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Two strangers meet each other by chance and have a passionate affair. At some point the man has to move on, leaving his lover feeling abandoned and wounded, like ‘a cat under the rain’… But she accepts her fate with grace and dignity: both of them knew that it was never meant to last.
So goes the story told in La gata bajo la lluvia, Cat Under the Rain, an enduring classic from 1981 which was popularised by one of Spain’s great musical legends: La Señora de la Canción. La Novia de la Juventud. La Reina de las Rancheras. La Española más mexicana. ¡La gran Rocío Dúrcal!
In the mid 70’s, Mexican singer-songwriter Juan Gabriel convinced Dúrcal to perform some of his rancheras. She did so, and with such huge success that she became associated with the genre ever since. The singer became known then as La Reina de las Rancheras – Queen of the Rancheras and La Española Más Mexicana: the Most Mexican of All (female) Spaniards.
La gata bajo la lluvia is now considered to have been the turning point in the transformation of Dúrcal’s music – from ballad singer to Ranchera performer.
Desde su aparición en 1981, la canción ha tenido numerosas versiones. La más reciente es de junio de este año, de mano de la cantante mexicana-estadounidense de 19 años Ángela Aguilar. Al igual que Dúrcal, Aguilar trabaja con géneros de la “música regional” (tradicional, folklórica) del mundo hispano. Aguilar interpreta La Gata bajo la lluvia en colaboración con el DJ y productor de música electrónica Steve Aoki.
La gata bajo la lluvia es una de esas canciones que cuentan una historia. O, mejor dicho, describen una situación con mínimos detalles, y uno se imagina el resto. El oyente tiene que conectar los puntos - the listener joints the dots to make sense of what the full background story might have been.
The melody is rich with unresolved notes that are left there hanging - just like the female narrator -, compelling the listener to pay attention until the very end, when the melody finally settles on its ‘home chord’ with the words “por ti”.
Ilustración del episodio: Nuestro Stories - nuestrostories.com
*****
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You can give us some love with a one-off donation at Buy Me a Coffee. Your support is much appreciated and will help me keep creating new episodes.
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The podcast currently has 36 episodes available.