The Moment You Hear It
Welcome back to Brayan’s Spanish corner. I am still your host, Brayan De Los Rios Guisao. Extra brownie points if you actually tried to read my last name. For those that mumbled it in their heads, it’s okay I do it too. This week I am covering the music of my childhood. My childhood memories consist of parties and then more parties. I can’t even remember the occasions for some of them. It seems my family would just find any excuse to get together and party.
My family doesn’t understand the concept of a throwback. If they did then all our music would be throwbacks. It could be 1977, 2007, or 2017 and we will still be dancing to the same salsa songs as if they were new. Salsa was the soundtrack to my childhood and my mother’s before me. It is a part of my inheritance.
When you are from the ages of 1-10, you can’t quite make out the lyrics over all the laughing and yelling. You are too busy collecting all the stories from your aunts and uncles. It is only in this drunken revelry that you have access to every chisme of the last thirty years.
Then there is the moment when you start to dance. Really dance. You are now old enough to be a professional salsa dancer. The spotlight is on you. If you dare dance badly you will be shamed for it. You will be judged by everyone because you are required to dance with everyone. Your mother, aunts, and cousins. Choosing not to dance is not an option. You can try but you will bombarded with questions of “que pasa?”
Then there comes the moment when you hear for the first time. Truly hear. Maybe you are in your car or it is playing on a speaker in the street. You start to sing along and catch the lyrics. That’s when you realize this festive and jovial music has the most depressing lyrics of all time.
Se que tu no quieres que yo a ti te quiera
siempre tu me esquivas de alguna manera
si te busco por aqui me sales por alla
lo unico que yo quiero no me agas sufrir mas
I know you don’t care for me. That I did care for you
You always avoided me in some way
If I look for you over here, you come out from there
The only thing I want is that you don’t make me suffer anymore.
En el mundo en que yo vivo siempre hay cuatro esquinas,
Pero entre esquina y esquina, siempre habrá lo mismo,
Para mi no existe el cielo, ni luna ni estrellas.
Para mi no alumbra el sol, pa mi todo es tinieblas,
In the world where I live there are always four corners
But between corner and corner there will always be the same
The sky doesn’t exist for me. Neither do the moon and the stars
There is no light from the sun. For me there is only darkness.
Un matrimonio africano, esclavos de
Un espanol, el les daba muy mal trato
Y a su negra le pego
Y fue alli, se revelo el negro guapo, tomo
Venganza por su amor y aun se escucha
En la verja, no le pegue a mi negra
No le pegue a la negra
An African marriage. Slaves to a Spaniard.
He (the Spaniard) would treat her terribly and he hit his (husband of) black woman
And he went there, the handsome black man revealed himself.
Took revenge for his love, and still you can hear through the grapevine
Don’t hit my black woman
Don’t hit the black woman.
I am operating under the faith that you clicked the links in the song titles and that you hear the songs the way I do. I am now starting to realize that I don’t have any objectivity when it comes to these songs. Do they sound joyful to me because they sound that way to everyone? I don’t know because I can’t separate the music from the memories. I can hear the laughter and the jokes. The expression of love through drunken tears. “Sabes que te quiero mucho mi hijito?” The gloom and tragedy of the lyrics seem to be no match for the resilience that my people have. That is my inheritance. The power to hear joy in any occasion.
The Junction Journal 