Qué Pasa, Raúl: Spanish Thru Songs

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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Today it's all about coffee. How to order it (formally and informally), ways to have it... Plus two epic Cuban smash hits featuring this greatest of all beverages.

Just as importantly, in this episode I get to ask you to buy me a coffee. ¡Invítame a un café!

I have just opened an account at buymeacoffee.com that will allow listeners of Qué Pasa Raúl to make one-off small donations to support the show.

It will be great to know that there are some of you who like the show enough to want more of it. This is one way for you to let me know. Click here and easily make your one-off donation. Your support will encourage me to continue creating many new episodes.

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¡Dame un café con leche, mami!

In this episode we talk about actions that involve parts of the body and clothes. Putting on clothes, taking off clothes… Especially the latter.

Taking off one's clothes became a big trend in mid-to-late 70’s Spain. With dictator Franco finally dead, it was a turbulent time of change as a heady sense of liberation descended upon Spanish society. It’s the period that we know as la transición – the transition, from el franquismo to la democracia.

‘Las tetas y la política’ (boobs and politics), as some have put it, became the two great preoccupations of many Spaniards during this sort of adolescence in our recent history, in a social phenomenon that became known as el destape (the 'uncovering').

Model, actress and singer Susana Estrada became one of the biggest stars in a new subgenre of destape raunchy comedies, which often blended heavy-handed erotism and (mostly female) nudity with political satire.

In 1981, Estrada released Amor y Libertad, a ten-song album of disco music. The title says it all: Love and freedom. Not just romantic or even sexual love but, more broadly, self love, self respect. Amor por uno mismo o, más exactamente, por una misma. Respeto. Autoestima, as we’d call it today.

The album is a true call to arms. Out of the ten song titles, no less than four are commands told in the imperative sense. Hagámoslo juntos. Let's do it together. ¡Ven! Come! ¡Gózame ya! Enjoy me now! And then, our song for this episode: ¡Quítate el sostén! Take off your bra!

¡Quítate el sostén! is a rap song, inspired by the disco scene of the time and early hip hop. Estrada had a lot to say, and rapping was the ideal medium for her to deliver her message.

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Every once in a while, a pop song comes up that plays around with religious imagery and metaphors. Think Like a Prayer or There Must Be an Angel (Playing with my Heart). In this episode we will learn about one such song: Experiencia religiosa from Enrique Iglesias' eponymous debut album from 1997.

The lyric of Enrique's ballad is really a collection of romantic cliches, sprinkled with some vocabulary connected to the Christian religion (éxtasis, ceremonia, resucitar, infinito or aleluya); but sometimes, big fat cliches are exactly what makes a song work.

In Experiencia religiosa, the often twin languages of romance and religion combine together to create a classic romantic power ballad, one that has animated many a karaoke night in Spain since it came out back in the late 90's.

The song is best enjoyed whilst also watching the official video. It shows us Enrique standing alone in a empty church, with candles all around, a gospel choir there just for him, and those bluish beams of light that seemed to be everywhere in the 90’s. Experiencia religiosa is the 1990’s on steroids!

Episode art: San Francisco de Asís (detail) by Francisco de Zurbarán

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La Polla Records, known by fans simply as La Polla, emerged from Álava, in el País Vasco (the Basque Country) right at the end of the 70’s. In a strictly punk sense, the group were to Spain what the Sex Pistols were to England.

The song No somos nada, their 1986 eponymous record's opening track, is a sort of manifesto for the group: 'so this is who are are'. And what is that? Well: somos los nietos de los obreros que nunca pudisteis matar. somos los nietos de los que perdieron la Guerra Civil. No somos nada. No somos nada.

This was scathing, take-no-prisoners protest music for Spain's fledgling democracy in the early 80's. The stuff that Evaristo, the band's lead singer, was saying in his lyrics - with subjects ranging from Spanish party politics to the Catholic church - was a bit too much for most people at the time to handle. Mainstream radio wouldn’t touch La Polla with a bargepole, so it enjoyed a truly cult status amongst fans. Which was, of course, part of the fun of it all.

Listen to the episode to learn more about La Polla Records, los cómics de Astérix el Galo, el rock radical vasco, the art of Spanish blasphemy (and bad language in general), and why in our language 'ser la polla' is a very desirable thing.

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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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During the 60’s and 70’s, pop artists would often record their most popular songs in multiple languages. Such was the case with Dalida, an Egypt-born Italian-French singer who became a huge star in France and much of the Middle East throughout the second half of the 20th century. 

For this type of artist it was - it still is - common practice to have songs written for them that echo real events from their life. In 1967, at the age of 34, Dalida became pregnant by an 18-year-old Italian student. In 1973, a song was written for her with the title Il venait d'avoir 18 ans, (‘He had just turned 18’). 

The song illustrates the subject of the mature woman who falls for a much younger man - a theme that we’ve seen often in films and books (most famously perhaps in The Graduate, a title referenced in the Spanish version of the song), though mostly from the young man’s perspective, as a coming of age story or a tale of initiation. In this song, however, we have a female narrator, and she is telling us her story. Dalida recorded a Spanish version of this mournful ballad with the title Tenía 18 años. 

Tune in to this episode to know more about this fascinating artist and her song Tenía 18 años.

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Paco Ibáñez en el Olympia was a double album recorded live at the famous Parisian theatre in 1969. It has since become one of Spain’s great classic albums, and a window into a very particular time and place in the country’s recent history.

Ibáñez (b. Valencia, 1934), had been banned from performing in public in his country of birth, due to his openly oppositional stance to the Franco regime. The gig at the Olympia was full of young Spanish dissenters, mixed with many of the same feverish French university students who had been at the era-defining May ’68 Paris riots (seen Bertolucci's film The Dreamers?).

As a musical artist, Ibáñez was greatly inspired by the chansonnier George Brassens, a truly influential figure for several generations of Spanish cantautores (politically minded singer-songwriters), who adopted his style of acerbic social commentary in songs that were also witty, humourous and catchy.

Ibáñez gave Spanish lyrics to some of Brassens' tunes, and also set to music the work of many classic Spanish poets, both old and contemporary. Among the latter was Gabriel Celaya and his powerful poem La poesía es un arma cargada de futuro (Poetry is a weapon loaded with future), a title that could sum up Ibáñez's whole attitude to music and song: "Poesía para el pobre, poesía necesaria como el pan de cada día...".

Listen up for some vivid poetic language and for Ibáñez's own voice reminiscing on his childhood among cows - his first ever audience - in the Basque countryside, his discovery of Brassens and that famous night at the Olympia.

*****

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).

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