If you were a Chicano growing up in the US in the late '80s-early '90s you could not escape Linda Ronstadt and her Canciones de Mi Padre record album. Every abuelita played this album over and over until the grooves wore out (you were one rich Mexican if you had a cd-player! )-- it brought back memories of the old country, good, bad, and tragic.
La Ronstadt didn't just sing the ranchera classics, homegirl owned them! One of my favorites as as child was "Por Un Amor"-- so sad and damn near suicidal.
(I hope I did that right since I can't access YouTube to be able to tell)
Another favorite song of mine was "Como Quien Pierde Una Estrella" by the dreamy (at the time) Alejandro Fernández. Unfortunately, the song got played out real fast because of all the drunken chivatos who karaoke'ed it to death at the clubs while dedicating to their very special mamis... and sometime papis
The video is pretty cheesy though:
greg in noord-frankrijk
Nice songs. The first one is pleasant to listen to. But the glittering outfit...
Walker
That's pretty exotic stuff for a guy like me who comes from a frozen land where people aren't very expressive. It kind of makes you jealous because we can't write songs with lyrics like that; they would only become over-sentimental and therefore riciculous and ultimately unbearable to listen to.
Fredrik
Hehe, do you speak Spanish? If you don't either, that might be why it doesn't sound cheesy to us! (But the first one was beautiful, thanks Elaine!)
Another language really helps. I think things sound much more poetical in Swedish, so I tried to find some tear-dripping Swedish music on youtube (no decent Evert Taube - scandal!), but only found Little Ida's Summer Song, which did the trick - I'm crying like a baby!
And yes, perhaps our nostalgic songs up here north are not as....melodramatic as the Latino ones!
Here is a recent West Norwegian nostalgic song, Floden = The River, which was made for a religious musical about Pietistic nostalgia and tells about religious longing (the male singer is the Norwegian "rock priest"), but like many Catholic convent school girls, you have probably also discovered that religious phrases sometimes have erotic overtones ("the good you do to me" etc... ):
And since it was Saint Patrick's Day yesterday and I descend from a long line of abducted and raped Irish maidens, here is another popular sad West Norwegian song about longing for Tir na Noir, the Celtic Land of Youth far out in the western ocean with its beautiful mistress Mary McKear:
(Don't mind the eccentric fantasy video.)
Walker
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Hehe, do you speak Spanish? If you don't either, that might be why it doesn't sound cheesy to us! (But the first one was beautiful, thanks Elaine!)
Not really, but it's not too hard to guess what those songs are about!
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Another language really helps. I think things sound much more poetical in Swedish, so I tried to find some tear-dripping Swedish music on youtube (no decent Evert Taube - scandal!), but only found Little Ida's Summer Song, which did the trick - I'm crying like a baby!
Nice songs! And yes, scandal is what it is! You know, Idas sommarvisa is one of those songs children sing in school. In the first years of school we always sang it at the breaking-up, just before the summer holidays began.( )
And yes, another language truly helps. BTW, am I to understand that Swedish is common in Norwegian folk music?
Elaine
Walker wrote:
That's pretty exotic stuff for a guy like me who comes from a frozen land where people aren't very expressive. It kind of makes you jealous because we can't write songs with lyrics like that; they would only become over-sentimental and therefore riciculous and ultimately unbearable to listen to.
Really? This Swede seems to be very expressive:
If you want EMOTION (in big capital letters), watch this clip of Lola "La Grande" Beltrán, the Queen of Ranchera music:
Uriel
The roommate likes to torture me with bad tejano and Mexican oompah music -- but at least he's usually doing housework to it when he plays it! (So cute -- a big, tall Mexican in an Aunt Jemima do-rag going to town with a feather duster.... I love a man with dishpan hands!)
Walker
Elaine, are you laughing at Zarah Leander, the Swedish Diva of the Third Reich who in that clip sounds like she'd recently had a sex change? How dare you?
You're a pearl!
About that Lola "La Grande" Beltrán lady, yes, that was so extreeemely emotional I couldn't help but chuckle quite a bit. And that guy behind her was totally smiling! Is that how most Mexican-Americans react upon hearing that kind of music? Or are there some of you that start thinking about the Old Country and weep their eyes out?
Elaine
Walker wrote:
Elaine, are you laughing at Zarah Leander, the Swedish Diva of the Third Reich who in that clip sounds like she'd recently had a sex change? How dare you?
Why no! I would never laugh at a legend... even if she did mature into a baritone-voiced drag queen.
Zarah in her prime.
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About that Lola "La Grande" Beltrán lady, yes, that was so extreeemely emotional I couldn't help but chuckle quite a bit. And that guy behind her was totally smiling! Is that how most Mexican-Americans react upon hearing that kind of music? Or are there some of you that start thinking about the Old Country and weep their eyes out?
He was probably just smiling out of wonderment or sheer bliss for being in such presence. Typically in norteño/banda/ranchera music, when you hear something that puts a smile on your face, you howl like coyote, "¡Ai ai aieee ai ai!!!!!" and yell out "¡Eso, eso!" like a crazy fool.
Walker
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Typically in norteño/banda/ranchera music, when you hear something that puts a smile on your face, you howl like coyote, "¡Ai ai aieee ai ai!!!!!" and yell out "¡Eso, eso!" like a crazy fool.
Hehe, that sounds like fun! ¡Eso, eso!
Uriel
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Typically in norteño/banda/ranchera music, when you hear something that puts a smile on your face, you howl like coyote, "¡Ai ai aieee ai ai!!!!!" and yell out "¡Eso, eso!" like a crazy fool.
And if you think she's kidding about the howling, no she ain't -- every guy I know hears that crap and pulls out a grita!
Fredrik
Elaine wrote:
Why no! I would never laugh at a legend... even if she did mature into a baritone-voiced drag queen.
LOL, true. When she sang "if ever I take a maiden from Värmland " it didn't sound lesbian, but very hetro!
Walker wrote:
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BTW, am I to understand that Swedish is common in Norwegian folk music?
Not in folk music per se, but not unusual in popular music. It goes back to rallerne, the hardcore macho Swedish workmen who built the Norwegian railways and much industry 100 years ago, I think. Just like the cowboy in the Wild West, the rallar (typically called Carl Oscar etc.) would take a guitar, fiddle or harmonica and sing out his booze-fuelled longing for flickorna i Småland.
As we are used to "native", non-Anglo music in both Swedish, Danish, Nynorsk, Bokmål and dialect, we have a wide linguistical repertoire for lyrics. I experienced that first-hand during Easter, when I was writing my family's musical contribution to my cousin's wedding this summer. I wanted to write it in archaïc Nynorsk, in imitation of medieval ballads, but the rest of the family banned Nynorsk as "too hillbilly-ish". When I refused to write in something as plain as Bokmål, we settled on Danish and its air of Baroque psalms.
Walker
Fredrik wrote:
As we are used to "native", non-Anglo music in both Swedish, Danish, Nynorsk, Bokmål and dialect, we have a wide linguistical repertoire for lyrics. I experienced that first-hand during Easter, when I was writing my family's musical contribution to my cousin's wedding this summer. I wanted to write it in archaïc Nynorsk, in imitation of medieval ballads, but the rest of the family banned Nynorsk as "too hillbilly-ish". When I refused to write in something as plain as Bokmål, we settled on Danish and its air of Baroque psalms.
To me that seems like a strange compromise, writing in Danish. But then I guess it isn't since you're used to Danish lyrics. I'm curious, is it tradition that you make musical contributions to weddings in your family? Is it you and your immediate family that's going to perform what you've written?
)-- it brought back memories of the old country, good, bad, and tragic.
