Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

I was recently rummaging through old papers, poems and short stories I had written aeons ago and columns and reviews I had penned for various publications when I chanced upon a few articles I had submitted to the now defunct newspaper Noticias. This was a monthly free magazine for the Latin American community in London which purported to be the voice of the Latin diaspora. Whether it ever achieved that objective or not it's a moot point now that it no longer exists, but at least we, Spanish-speakers had our very own paper at some point. A friend of mine I had met in Cuba a few years before, had been asked by the editor at Noticias to produce a special supplement in English to attract Anglophone readers. The new section would have a didactic approach as some words and phrases would be highlighted and their meaning given so as to provide a better understanding of the Spanish language and culture. It was in this context that I wrote a few columns on various subjects such as: race, music, sports and poetry.

The pay was low and my cheque very rarely arrived on time, but I had a lovely time writing for the publication. I was given free rein in regards to the topics I could cover, which was manna from heaven to a free-lance writer. As for word limit, they were pretty relaxed in the magazine.

I don't normally write in Spanish on this blog. There are many reasons as to why, but one should be enough as an explanation: I live now in the UK and cater mainly to an Anglophone audience. Yet, sometimes the Latin-Caribbean in me wants to wax lyricial in my own mother tongue and indulge in the aphorisms, neologisms and slang we use in Cuba and other countries of the Hispanic diaspora.

Which is why I will be posting some of the aforementioned columns that first appeared in Noticias on my blog in the next few weeks. Fret not if you can't speak or read Spanish, there will always be a translation.

I'll kick off with an article on how Latin American pop and rock was influenced by both British and US musical trends, but it also drew from its own roots. The original feature is in Spanish and the English translation appears below it. The translation was carried out by Lise McDermot Jones, who was the person in charge of the special English supplement at Noticias. And I would like to use this space now to thank her for giving me the opportunity to contribute to her section. All names of bands or soloists that appear in the Spanish version have been highlighted and links to videos on youtube have been included. I encourage you, dear readers and fellow bloggers, to follow those links and discover a different side to Latin American culture. The musician mentioned at the end of my piece is Santana, who, at the time of writing the article, had just won a clutch of Grammies courtesy of his album "Supernatural". I hope you enjoy this column.

De 'Lads', 'Dudes' y 'Latin Boys'

La persona que dijo alguna vez que el rock era un fenómeno solo de la cultura anglosajona estaba, o escuchando a Travis cantando “Mata Siguaraya” o pensó quizás que harían la versión algún día.

Se que estoy bailando en case del trompo. Por una parte la música británica ha producido talentos de la talla del dúo Lennon/McCartney, de grupos como Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Queen, Oasis y solistas como Elton John, Sting y Tom Jones. Por otra parte, “Yanquilandia” no se ha quedado de brazos cruzados y así hemos tenido a Aerosmith, Metallica, Janis Joplin y Jimi Hendrix. ¿Entonces, con todos estos truenos donde está nuestro rock latino?

Nuestra identidad roquera tiene mucho que agradecerle a la música anglo-norteamericana, pero también tiene progenitores propios. Salió de la mezcla de aquella canción protesta de los 60 y 70 con el terremoto social-político que azotaba a nuestro continente. Eran años cuando Bob Dylan cantaba que “la respuesta, mis amigos, está soplando en el viento”, era asesinado Víctor Jara en Chile, le daban a Benedetti cuarenta y ocho horas para abandonar Argentina y el mundo de pronto se encontraba al borde del cataclismo nuclear debido a la Crisis de Octubre. Nuestro rock, o rock-pop, viene de nuestra Mercedes Sosa, de la poesía de Neruda y del folclor de Atahualpa Yupanqui.

El primer contacto que tuve con el género fue a través de Los Prisioneros, grupo chileno y Fito Paéz, músico argentino. En el caso de los primeros fue una cinta pasada de mano en mano y, que por supuesto, dejaba mucho que desear en cuanto a calidad. Pero el frescor anarquista con que los chicos se enfrentaban a los problemas de Chile en los años 80 era intoxicante.

Fito llegó a Cuba de la forma más anónima posible y se fue convertido en una celebridad. Con un par de tenis de colores diferentes el uno del otro, pelo largo y rizado, nariz colosal y espejuelos enormes, fue su capacidad de “dar su corazón” lo que nos creó una “Fitomania” que todavía nos dura. Su influencia lo demuestra el hecho de que cuando Mercedes Sosa oyó “Yo Vengo a Ofrecer mi Corazón” por primera vez, le dijo al músico rosarino que estaba interesada en cantarla.

Esa misma noche un grupo de “milicos” tocó en casa del compositor y le dijeron: “No jodas más y no te metas donde no te llaman.”

Si es cierto que nuestro rock ha servido de tribuna y de arenga, también ha servido de reflexión.

Pongo por ejemplo a Carlos Varela, músico cubano, que supo expresar las dudas y conflictos de la juventud de la isla caribeña a finales de los 80. Canciones como “Guillermo Tell”, “Cuchilla en la Acera” y “El Gnomo” están impregnadas de un sentimiento inconformista, de anarquía inocente y de rebeldía adolescente muy propia de aquella Cuba pre-período especial.

Para terminar esta breve defensa de nuestro patrimonio roquero, me basta con decir que el músico que este año barrió con los Grammy en Estados Unidos es muy latino y ha influido en muchas generaciones de jóvenes no solo de nuestro continente sino del mundo entero. ¿Qué no puedes adivinarlo? Entonces me marcho, pero primero, “Oye como va, mi ritmo, bueno pa’ gozar, mulata…”

Esta columna fue publicada originalmente en junio del 2000.

Of 'Lads', 'Dudes' and 'Latin Boys'

Whoever said that rock was a phenomenon solely of the Anglo-Saxon culture was either listening to Travis singing “Mata Siguaraya” (the song made famous by Benny More) or perhaps thought that they would do a version one day.

I know that i am probably stepping on some toes here. On the one hand, British music has produced talents of the stature of the Lennon/McCartney duo, groups such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Queen and Oasis and soloists such as Elton John, Sting and Tom Jones. “Yankeeland” has not been idle either and has given us Aerosmith, Metallica, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. So, with all this going on, where does this leave Latin American rock?

Our rock identity owes much to Anglo-American music, but it also has its own forebears. It came from the mixture of those protest songs of the 60s and 70s with the socio-political earthquake that shook our continent. These were years in which, whilst Bob Dylan sang “the answer my friend is blowing in the wind”, Victor Jara was assassinated in Chile, Benedetti was given forty-eight hours to leave the country and the world suddenly found itself on the brink of nuclear disaster with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Our rock, or rock pop, comes from our own Mercedes Sosa, the voice of the Americas, from the poetry of Neruda, from the folklore of Atahualpa Yupanqui.

My first contact with the genre was through Los Prisioneros, a Chilean group and Fito Paez, an Argentine musician. In the case of the former, a tape was passed from hand to hand, which of course, left much to be desired with regard to quality. But the anarchistic freshness with which they confronted the problems in Chile was intoxicating.

Fito arrived in my home country of Cuba in the most anonymous manner and left a celebrity. Wearing trainers of different colours, with long, curly hair, an enormous nose and huge glasses, it was his ability to "give his heart" which started a "Fitomania" which continues to this day. His influence is demonstrated by the fact that when Mercedes Sosa first heard "Yo Vengo a Ofrecer mi Corazón" she told the musician from Rsoario that she interested in singing the song.

That same night the military knocked on the composer's door and told him "Don't mess with that doesn't concern you".

Whilst our rock has served as platform and pulpit, it has also been used for reflection. An example is the Cuban musician Carlos Varela, who expressed the doubts and conflicts of the Cuban youth at the end of the 80s. Songs such as "Guillermo Tell", "Cuchilla en la Acera" and "El Gnomo"are saturated with a nonconformist sentiment, with an innocent anarchy and an adolescent rebellion very much of pre "Special Period" Cuba.

To conclude this brief defence of our rock heritage, it is enough to say that the musician that made a clean sweep a tthe Grammies in the United States this year is very Latin and has influenced many generations, not only in our continent but all over the world, You haven't guessed yet? Well, I'll finish here, but first "Oye como va, mi ritmo, bueno pa’ gozar, mulata…”

This column was originally published in June 2000.

© 2011

Next Post: “The Secret in Their Eyes (Review)”, to be published on Wednesday 6th July at 11:59pm (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

Last Sunday I had a mind-blowing experience. I went on a trip through a desert. True, lush vegetation could be spotted in the distance but in order to get to it, I had to negotiate plenty of arid land. My only companion was a 4x4 that helped me navigate the cracks, potholes and rare little bushes I found on the uneven terrain. Last Sunday I had the experience of a lifetime.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that this happened in the comfort of my own house. To be more specific, the above scenario took place whilst I was sprawled on the couch in the lounge.

Because last Sunday I travelled across someone's face.

It's not everyday that you're greeted by an A2 image of someone whose oeuvre you've adored all your life. Someone who fronted a band you followed and whose music you still worship. Yet, that was exactly what happened last weekend when I opened the New Review supplement in The Observer. There, on the front page, the smirk of one Robert Plant (above) was all the encouragement I needed to sit down and enjoy one of the better interviews I've read for a long time.

However, as I devoured every word of the exchange between Ed Vulliamy and the erstwhile Led Zeppelin singer, a niggling thought kept pestering me. In fact, the intrusive reflection came with a name attached to it: Miriam O'Reilly.

If you live in the UK, you will probably have heard of and/or read about the former BBC presenter's win in her age-discrimination case against the corporation. O'Reilly (right), who is 53, was axed from the show 'Countryfile' a couple of years ago when the programme moved from its regular Sunday morning slot to the evening time. Prior to the change, the ex-BBC presenter faced a barrage of insults: from one director allegedly warning her about her wrinkles to another one mentioning Botox. Even a cameraman apparently waved a can of black spray in front of her to cover her white roots. Unsurprisingly, her ability to perform her job was not once factored into the equation.

The reason why O'Reilly's name was on my mind as I read the interview with Robert Plant was that I kept wondering what a similar image on the front of a Sunday supplement with a fifty- or sixty-something woman would read like. It's a rhetorical question, though, for the answer would be: the main focus would be on her age and looks.

A recent piece on Annette Bening and her starring role in the film 'The Kids Are All Right', concentrated more on the fact that at 52 she hasn't had 'anything' done, than on her thespian skills. Thought the article was mostly positive, I kept asking myself at the time if I would ever read a similar feature on Jack Nicholson or Harrison Ford's facial features.

It's not a secret that as a society we're not very often comfortable with the idea of ageing. And that's putting it midly. What is disconcerting is that this attitude is more conspicuous when women are the subject of the discussion. O'Reilly follows in the footsteps of Anna Ford (62 when she 'left' her job as a newsreader at the BBC, rumours say that she was forced to go), Arlene Phillips (ex-judge of 'Strictly Come Dancing' and deemed past her use-by date) and Moira Stuart (another ex-newsreader at the BBC who apparently did not fit in the corporation's plans for HD television). Is ageism, then, intrincately linked to sexism?

In an almost comical turn of events, days after O'Reilly's win, Ed Davey, the government's employment relations minister, announced that the coalition was planning to phase out the retirement age at 65. That means that employers cannot force people out of their jobs on account of their age. If only the BBC executives had waited another couple of years! They'd probably still have their former Countryfile presenter, they wouldn't have lost face with the British public and should any of those folks in the shires complain about O'Reilly's wrinkles (unlikely, I know, I'm sure that they have mirrors in their big, massive mansions), the Beeb would have retorted, ' Well, guess what? She can stay for as long as she wants. The government says so'. But no, that wasn't the case and now there's a lot of head-scratching and soul-searching at Auntie's headquarters.

And if the above doesn't sound ironic enough, here's a further twist. Just a few weeks ago scientists in Boston suggested that there might be treatments soon to slow or even reverse the process of ageing. So, in less than a fortnight middle-aged and elderly citizens of this nation were treated to a cocktail of news through which they discovered that they could work for as long as they wanted to, provided that their employer was not the BBC, or a similar media outlet. And should life do what it always does and run its natural course, would you believe it, there's this magical potion/cream/pill that can help you, yes, you, oldie! delay the process of ageing, or even reverse it. Ha! You'll look eighteen again, you'll even look younger than your grandchildren. In fact, people will probably stop your offspring in the street and ask them how old their newborn (that's you) is. And still people thought that 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' was just a movie. It's the blueprint for the future, my dear fellows!

Joking aside, the obsession with age we're witnessing nowadays borders on the sinister. And the fact that it is women who feel more of this pressure to remain young, could be construed as yet another misogynistic attempt to rein in the female of the species. In a few weeks, a famous ceremony will take place in a certain part of LA. Along with the glitz and glamour there will probably be muted mobile phones in the audience vibrating to the sound of messages left by some of the stars' plastic surgery specialists with clear indications on which un-Botoxed eyebrow to raise whenever a cameraperson is in the vicinity. It goes without saying that any attempt at laughing on the part of the aforementioned celebrities will be deeply frowned upon (no pun intended, but oh, the irony of it!) by their medical advisors. Preposterous as this scenario might seem, it's already made inroads into our daily, un-celeb life.

When I took my imaginary trek across Robert Plant's face last Sunday, each line, wrinkle and furrow told me a unique story. It was a tale that combined triumphs (we can safely say that Led Zeppelin was the summa cum laude of rock'n'roll) and pitfalls (One of Plant's children, his son Karac, died aged five in 1977 and the singer almost packed it all in at the time). Botox those cracks away and you're left with no history. As one of the Zep's more famous songs goes: 'There's a lady who's sure/All that glitters is gold', we had better reassure the lady in question that she is the glittering gold, wrinkles or not. And I'm sure that she'll enjoy her journey up that stairway to heaven even more.

© 2011

Next Post: ‘Of Literature and Other Abstract Thoughts’, to be published on Wednesday 9th February at 11:59pm (GMT

Photo of Robert Plant by Gregg Delman

Photo of Miriam O'Reilly taken from thisislondon.co.uk

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

Last week I asked readers and fellow bloggers to participate in a debate about religion and today I'm pleased to announce the two posters who rose to the challenge and who will be contributing to our discussion.

But before I give way to today's post, I would like to add my own thoughts to the debate.

It seemed to me, both from the comments left last week and the feedback from the contributors, that religion and God are two separate issues. It also transpired that some people prefer to see God as a personal entity and not as part of an organised movement headed by a (usually male) leader. Another element that caught my eye was the word 'faith' and how it's used (wrongly in my view) as a byword for religion. For instance, I would say that I am a person of faith, even though I don't worship. I have faith in my fellow human beings, hence my being a 'humanist'. It wasn't surprising to read how many bloggers had grown up against a religious background - after all I follow your blogs, so I've read your stories. It was, nonetheless, revealing to read how many of you had given your religious faith the heave-ho. Lastly, it was interesting to see some posters highlighting the spiritual side of their religion, or their relationship to God. In a post I wrote about a year ago, I expressed concern about how spirituality has somehow become an equivalent of devoutness, stripping the concept of its more innate human aspect. In my opinion, we're all spiritual, religious or not.

And now, without any further ado, let me introduce you to the two bloggers (and writers in their own right!) who will lead today's post:

Judith Mercado (JM) writes the blog 'Pilgrim Soul'. She was born in Puerto Rico and moved at a young age to the U.S., where her parents became Pentecostal ministers. Her multicultural fiction frequently explores the tensions among conflicting religious perspectives, as well as those between the Latino and Anglo cultures. Amazon.com selected her novel 'Choosing Sides' as a quarter finalist in its 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition. "Asunder," a short story, won the literary category of the 2010 Literary Lab Genre Wars competition. Other short stories have been published in literary magazines. She has just had two short stories published in Gemini Magazine (click here to read it) and Rose and Thorn (you can read it by clicking here).

Jodi MacArthur (JMA) writes the blog 'Fiction Writer ~ Jodi MacArthur'. Exiled in deep southern Texas, Jodi MacArthur is a Seattle author hoping to write her way back to the Pacific Northwest. She writes omnivorous fiction favoring fable, suburban punk, horror and bizarro.

The three questions were:

1- Complete the following sentence: Religion is... and expand on your definition, please.

JM: Religion is, on a personal level, finite humanity’s endeavor to explain itself vis-à-vis the infinite. On a social level, religion establishes codes of morality and behavior. Culturally, it facilitates expression of cultural norms. Politically, it can serve as a tool for creating and defending the political unit. It is paradoxically both unifying and divisive. In other words, religion is a protean concept.

That is my answer through a cognitive filter. But, if religion appealed only to the mind, it would not have achieved its enduring quality. It would also not explain why, despite significant differences, the overwhelming majority of people associate, formally or loosely, with religion in all its variants.

The opening line of my favorite hymn says, “Oh, Lord, My God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the works Thy hand hath made.” Am I a churchgoer? No. Do I believe that there is a Creator responsible for bringing our world into existence? No, at least, not in the anthropomorphic sense. And yet that hymn moves me every single time I hear it. Is that because it is a relic from my childhood? Perhaps. Or could it be that the hymn appeals to an unknown and unknowable part of me that wants to connect with that dimension of life which, science’s efforts notwithstanding, we fall short of grasping in all its beauty. Of science’s efforts, Max Planck himself said that future progress in understanding liminal conditions “…will never enable us to grasp the real world in its totality any more than human intelligence will ever rise into the sphere of ideal spirit: these will always remain abstractions which by their very definition lie outside actuality.”

Rather than try to understand or judge the human predilection toward embracing religion, I simply accept that it exists. Indeed, I respect that religions seek coherence and order in a world that intrinsically may be incoherent and chaotic. I also embrace religion’s attempt to connect with the numinous, which has little to do with the mind. Of course, my respect and tolerance do not extend to the use of violence and oppression.

I come to this stance having experienced the full spectrum of religious belief. As the daughter of evangelical ministers, I grew up in a theistic environment. I then became an atheist, only to later shift to an embrace of the numinous. In my fiction, I spend a lot of time in churches, with characters who embrace, characters who flee from, but always characters who try to make sense of religion and spirituality in their lives. In this, they reflect my own life's journey. In a larger sense, they may reflect humanity’s journey as well.

JMA: Religion is a practice, a belief, a faith, a lifestyle, sometimes and often transformed into a denomination or a means of control all centered on or about a higher power or deity. That is what I think of when I think of the word religion. I believe the original Latin meaning has something to do with the word ligament, to be attached to God.

2- Do you think that religion has a role to play in modern democracies? Why?

JMA: Although, I do believe that morals support and uphold a family, society, and therefore a country, religion should be chosen (free will) by each individual, and should have no place in the government. I believe government should be there strictly to protect people, not to direct and control their lives.

JM: When religion embraces the individual as the ultimate arbiter, it is consistent with democracy. When, however, religion asserts that the social group or deity is the ultimate arbiter, religion may not cohere with democracy. Conflict, even warfare, may result when democracies and theocracies then seek to impose their differing values on each other.

3- Many of the ills visited on contemporary societies nowadays such as individualism, rampant consumerism and unchallenged materialism are usually paraded as the result of the erosion of religious values in the west. However, countries under theocratic rule still suffer from a similar erosion of human rights whilst displaying very intolerant attitudes to women, gays and other groups. What's your take on this?

JM: This is essentially a question about what determines human behavior. Religion can foster intolerance, yes, but it can also promote compassion and respect. Some religions encourage, through prosperity consciousness, the accumulation of wealth. Others uphold poverty and charity as the highest ideals. That all these practices thrive in both religious and nonreligious environments essentially proves the point that religion or lack of religion is not their cause.

JMA: This is something I’d like to think on for a while before spouting out an answer. But my first thought is this, mixing religion and power is never a pure and pretty thing. It is always a corruption and will lead to corruption under any circumstances (history proves this).

Thank you very much, Judith and Jodie for agreeing to participate in this discussion. It was great having you both on board. One last thought from me. If I was a religious person, it's very likely that my prayers to God (whoever that deity might be) would echo the lyrics of the song in today's clip because this melody pretty much sums up my vision, not just for me, but also for my fellow human beings. I hope you enjoy the music today, even if you need to speak, or at least understand Spanish very well. Ta muchly.

© 2011

Next Post: ‘Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music… Ad Infinitum’, to be published on Wednesday 2nd February at 11:59pm (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

Hubert Joanneton (journalist of the French magazine Radio Je Vois Tout): Violeta, you're a poet, composer, upholsterer and painter. If you had to choose one medium, which one would you select?

Violeta Parra: I'd rather keep the people.

Today's column was written some weeks ago. Then last Monday I learned of the death of the Argentinian singer Mercedes Sosa and a little part of me died that day, too. I felt, right there and then, compelled to modify the content of today's post and turn it, maybe, into a tribute to someone whose heartfelt performances made hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Ibero-Latin people like me feel proud of our rich heritage.

However, I have left most of the original material intact because the topic today is also linked to the art form to which Mercedes Sosa dedicated her life during a singing career that spanned more than five decades: the poet as singer.

It was during my adolescent years in Havana when I finally got the opportunity to choose the music I wanted to listen to - within the narrow confines of the Cuban society of the mid 80s and our government's prohibitions - and the first genre I embraced wholeheartedly was rock and roll. Bluesy, earthquaking, musical notes, became the be-all and end-all of my life's soundtrack. To say that I fell for rock's cliches and platitudes would be stating the bleeding obvious (Twisted Sister anyone? How about Quiet Riot?). But after a childhood where most of the music blaring out of the Made-in-the-USSR Selena radio we had in my house was traditional Cuban rhythms, I craved for a different experience.

During these years I turned my back on anything that had too deep a message and too flimsy a melody. Grand bass hooks, never-ending guitar solos and ear-piercing vocals were all the rage amongst my peers and I am not ashamed to admit that for some years the reigning sound in my life was that of a Fender Stratocaster.

That changed when I reached year 12 in college (high school in the US). One of my mates took me to see Arturo Sandoval at the Havana International Jazz Festival. I tagged along reluctantly and to this day I still remember getting butterflies in my stomach when the famed trumpeter appeared on stage and let rip. He was being supported by Irakere, a famous Cuban band, and they both awakened a strong desire in me to explore this genre further. Jazz is such a liberating and liberated music form that I am still amazed it took me so long to like it and accept it.

What came afterwards when I began university was the result of learning a foreign language in depth - English - and growing older and therefore looking at music from another perspective.

Whereas until then I had paid more attention to rhythm than lyrics, once I had begun to delve into the intricacies of English as a lexicon, I came across the poet as a singer, or a better way of putting it would be a singer who is a poet first and foremost, albeit with a good musical voice. An unexpected addendum was that this process allowed me to re-discover musical gems in my own native tongue. Enter Joaquín Sabina, Leonard Cohen and Joan Manuel Serrat. Enter also Patti Smith.

I was already familiar with the poet-as-a-singer genre. After all, the best example we have in Cuba is Silvio Rodríguez Domínguez, whose compositions feed on the writer's poetic and visually artistic nature. I was familiar, too, with Bob Dylan's songbook, but saw him above all as a performer. And as for the Catalán Serrat, the only tunes that appealed to me when I was younger were his immortal 'Penélope' and 'Mediterráneo'. The rest sounded strange to my teenage ears.

But when in 1991 Cuban television showed a very young Christian Slater playing an independent and rebellious pirate radio station DJ in the film 'Pump Up the Volume' I knew my very own 'Road to Damascus' moment had arrived. The opening track of that film was Leonard Cohen's 'Everybody Knows' and it was these two stanzas that brought the volte face in my life I have so far described: Everybody knows that the boat is leaking/Everybody knows that the captain lied/Everybody got this broken feeling/Like their father or their dog just died(...)Everybody knows that you love me baby/Everybody knows that you really do/Everybody knows that youve been faithful/Ah give or take a night or two/Everybody knows youve been discreet/But there were so many people you just had to meet/Without your clothes/And everybody knows

The softness with which the above lines were delivered, in that peculiarly husky voice Leonard had, made one forget for a minute that he was actually referring to someone who'd just cheated on him. Sublime.

From then on, my musical tastes widened up to include new poets-as-singers - Sabina, Tom Waits - and those to whom my younger years had never given a second chance, i.e., Serrat.

The history of these men and women who put pen to paper to create verses that could or would then be musicalised can be traced back to the ancient troubadours in Europe or griots in west Africa. These were poets (and story-tellers, too, but that's another post) who went after the tales that made up the bulk of their material. They were the purveyors of our folk heritage, never mind in which part of the world you found yourself. They were also the main motif for the appearance of a subgenre: the singer-as-a-poet. Joni Mitchell, please come out from behind that sofa. And you don't need any introduction, Baaba Maal.

And this is where the great Mercedes Sosa comes into the picture. She was the crown jewel of what Dante Alighieri called the fictio rethorica musicaque poita: rhetorical, musical, and poetical fiction. Evidence of that is the song that made her a household name in Iberoamerica, Gracias a la Vida (Thanks to Life). This melody had already been popularised by its author, poet-as-singer Violeta Parra. And yet, when you hear it in Mercedes's rich, alto voice, the emotional range through which it takes you makes you connect deeper with the lyrics: Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto/Me ha dado el sonido y el abecedario/Con él las palabras que pienso y declaro/Madre, amigo, hermano, y luz alumbrando/La ruta del alma del que estoy amando. (sorry, no translation)

Mercedes was not a poet (can I still write 'poetess' in English without any fear of being prosecuted?) and some people might even consider her to be an unnecessarily intrusive element between the poet-as-singer and his/her song. She wasn't a composer either, as far as I know. However, each melody she sang, every song she performed, she made it hers, both through her imposing stage persona and her prodigious voice. And to me that is enough proof, if any was needed, of poetry and the power of it. Here she is, performing one of her most famous numbers, Como la Cigarra (Like the Cicada), originally a poem by the Argentinian writer María Elena Walsh (I'm extremely sorry that I coud not find a good translation on youtube, I hope you can still enjoy it). Thanks.



Copyright 2009

Next Post: 'What Makes a Good Writer' by Zadie Smith, to be published on Tuesday 13th October at 11:59pm (GMT)

Road Songs (Langsam)

Back in the summer as we were making our way back home from sunny Dorset (although it did rain cats and dogs during our first three or fours days there) my mind wandered off into a territory of its own, as it sometimes does. When my mind does this I never try to reel it back as the outcome of its escapades is often very pleasant thoughts. And so it was on this occasion. The minivan we were in fitted roughly just over a dozen of people and after stopping at the Winchester Motorway Services, we headed off again back to London, some reading, others in a stupor, I, thinking. It was then that my wife asked me if I felt like returning to our house to which my reply was yes. Next, she asked me what I fancied doing most once back in our lair and my response was once again succinct: listening to some music.

During our stay at summer camp as every year we had a lot of fun; we went on walks, swam in the ocean and built bonfires in the evenings. But as it is also customary during this time there was no music blaring out from stereos. Recorded music is not allowed and it has always been a ground rule that I unwittingly challenged the first time I went when I decided to listen to my CD player on my own. No one said anything except for my wife who called this matter to my attention.

Cue three years later and our fourth stay and I was really craving C minors and arpeggios by the time we were about to come back to London. So, whilst I was sat there on the minivan I pondered upon the songs that would have accompanied me on this musical odyssey if I had been driving the same route. Several traffic jams helped me reach my decision and I feel tempted to write about them, too, but I think that these phenomena deserve a post themselves.

So, here they are, songs to listen to whilst driving back from summer camp.







Copyright 2008