Diary of a Reluctant Güera_archives

For a long time I didn’t “get” Mexican music, except for the melodic Latin pop ballads of Maná and Selena’s tequila-spiked cumbias. It took a lot to convert me. It started as an ironic appreciation for Kitsch-Mexicana. I think it was my ill-fated affair with the lead singer of a Duranguense band that put me over the edge, showing me the wrist-slashing bliss of regional Mexican music. I’m still fuzzy about the definitions, what distinguishes ranchera, from norteña from grupera music, but I’ve learned to appreciation a good cathartic wallow in self-loathing to the sound of Banda Recodo, Alicia Villareal and Intocable. I can also get down with Rico Tovar and K-Paz de la Sierra without any irony.

These are picks for the ultimate Mexican songs, by category:

Songs Nobody will Admit to Liking but after several “chelas” (beers) suddenly They Know every Single Word

“La Sirenita” (“The Little Mermaid”) Rico Tovar
“We had a little merman after exactly one year of marriage/with the face of a little angel but the tail of a fish.”

A kitsch classic of ranchero-cumbia, this song a national inside joke. It’s the theme song of a Saturday Night Live-type skit called “Las Nacas,” (roughly “The Hicks”).

“Procuro Olvidarte” (“I Manage to Forget You”) – K-Paz de la Sierra and La Apuesta

Representative of the Durengense trend, which swept the nation like Reggaeton before it. Everybody says they hate Durangense (except my ex-boyfriend) yet they crowd the clubs to dance the Durango two-step (Pasito Durangense) which can only be described as “pinguinesque.”

“La Sirenita” the Durangense remix.
Just when we thought nothing could be worse than the original.

“Con Todos Menos Conmigo” (“With Everyone but Me”) Timbiriche
Featuring lyrics like: “You’re eyes are two green slaps on the face.”
We had New Kids on the Block, Mexico had Timbiriche. We have Britney and Cristina. Mexico has Paulina and Thalía whose careers and rivalry started with Timbiriche.

Love, Alchohol and/or Death

Anything by Jaguares, the melancholy quartet which reaches deep into Mexico’s prehispanic past for their haunting melodies and fatalistic lyrics. The titles speak for themselves:
“Soy Alcohol” (“I am alcohol’)
“Matame porque Me Muero” (Kill Me cuz I’m Dying)
“Hay Amores que Matan” (“There are Loves that Kill”)

“Paloma Negra” (“Black Dove”) Folk song recorded by various artists (I recomend Lila Down’s version) About loving and loathing a partying, two-timing man (the archetypal conflict of Mexican Woman) Could be described as a hardcore version of Patsy’s Cline’s “Crazy. “Para cortarse las venas” -“for slashing your wrists” (but in a good way)

“La Llorona” (“The Weeping Woman”) Folk song recorded by various artists, based on an urban legend about a woman who drowned her children (and herself in some versions) in the river to avenge her husband’s betrayal and has haunted the streets ever since draped in white and crying “Oh my children, oh my children.” Many otherwise rational people have seen her, especially while drunk.

“It’s not me, it’s you”: Break-up Songs with No Mercy

“Ojala que te mueras” (“I hope you die”) Pesado
Surprisingy upbeat ranchera song wishing eternal damnation upon an ex lover.
“I hope you soul goes to hell and your tears are eternal.”

"A chillar a otra parte" ( “Go Cry Somewhere Else”) Pesado
“I know I’m going to enjoy when you come crying I’m going to laughing to see you grovel. You’ll regret ever having met me because today I declare myself your worst enemy. It’s what you deserve for abandoning me and coming back - go cry somewhere else!”

“Insensible a tí” (“Insensitive to You”) Alicia Villareal
Theme of a recent telenovela.
“I’ve cheated on you, many times, I’ve sought out his hot kisses in secret. I’ve lied to you so many times that I can’t keep hiding the truth. I’m living a forbidden love and I can’t keep it quiet any more, because I’m in heat and he makes me Insensitive to you.”

It’s all the Gringos Fault

“El Mojado” “Wetback” Ricardo Arjona’s Grammy-winning tribute to the illegal migrant worker and his suffering at the hands of the Big Bad Gringos.

“Pobre Juan” “Poor John.” Maná
ditto

“Jose Perez Leon" Tigres del Norte
ditto

Posted by Anna at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Shortly after our arrival in Santiago Nundichi, Don Aureliano asked us to visit his father who was ill. Don Aureliano is tall for a Mixtec man. His face, shaded by a white flat-brimmed sombrero, is gentle and serious. The community looks up to him, the same as his father, Don Jose. Both have been influential in local politics and pillars of the church.

We stepped into the hut, rough hewn pine boards with a roof of corrugated tin, smelling the warm waxy smell from the candles glowing around the images of Christ, Guadalupe, Juquila and others. Politely we shook hands with the group of stooped señores seated before the altar. The most elderly of these I took to be Don Jose, for whom we had come. Then I saw the wrinkled blankets on the bed had not been hastily made, but covered the skeletal limbs of the invalid, which seized and shuddered in time with the tearing sound of his breath. Don Aureliano gently pulled back the blanket to reveal the face, disfigured by pain into a taut beak. White foam streamed from the slit at the mouth, collecting in the folds of the blankets. As his son wiped it away it only seemed to froth thicker, drowning him in his own illness. The eyes stayed shut. I felt the soul fighting the feeble body; fighting to regain it, or fighting to be free of it, I don’t know.

“He was fine yesterday,” whispered Don Aureliano. “went to the market.”

We prayed and said Don Jose was a tough old nut, sure to pull through, but we left full of apprehension. Were we up to dealing with a death in the community? The five of us were not real missionaries, only idealistic youth looking to experience the simple spirituality of village life. As for me, I wasn’t even a real Catholic. Jorge, our leader, was not a real priest. He was a 26-year-old environmental lawyer who had undergone training to officiate Holy Week celebrations, not to bury the dead. For Brenda, a 20 year old med student, Don Jose’s impending death meant searing flashbacks of her own father’s passing only nine months earlier. At the crossroads in front of the house stalked an old woman. In one hand she clutched a spray off eafy branches which she held out in front of her, following them like a dousing rod. Every so often she stopped, made a sweeping motion with the leaves and rubbed the air with an egg she pulled from her pocket. She was obviously performing a traditional limpia, or cleaning, but what for?

Over a supper of bean stew we discussed quietly with Don Aureliano and his wife, Doña Placida. That morning they had taken Don Jose into the clinic in Tlaxiaco, the municipal capital, where they had taken blood and given fluids but had offered no diagnosis. They were afraid that if they took him back there they would send him to Oaxaca, where the treatment was expensive and the staff treated them badly.

“Was he bitten by an animal?” asked Brenda. “Did he eat anything unusual?”

The only irregularity they could recall was that upon returning from the market in Tlaxiaco he had consumed vast quantities of Agua de Chilacoyote, a drink made with strands of a spaghetti squash.
“That it came on so quickly makes me things it was poison or rabies.” We thought of the old woman and the eggs.

In the morning Don Aureliano arrived at our door.
“Buenos Dias,” he said, clutching his white sombrero politely to his chest. “How did you sleep?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“My father just died,” he said with the same understated courtesy, although sadness pulled softly at his features.

In the hut at the bottom of the hill Don Jose was laid out on a grass mat, wrapped in a blanket, only his peaked face showing, the orifices plugged with wads of cotton. Candles flickered around him, and friends and relatives were starting to arrive with flowers. In the undulating candle light the grey and red checked blanket seemed to move up and down with phantom breath. Never the less, there was no mistaking the body from the person. The twisting, moaning, fighting energy of the night before was gone and there was only an empty, shriveled seedpod. Its stillness was beyond rest, or even peace, it was just nothingness. I’d never seen a dead body before; my great-grandparents donated their bodies to science and Protestants aren’t into open caskets anyway.

Mexicans are famous for their familiar relationship with death. They celebrate it, make it into comical clay figures, and dance over the graves. But I can tell you that they mourn it too. Throughout the long day and night we sat with Don Jose’s body, we witnessed the grief of his widow and five children who arrived from as far away as Mexico City. The sons fought tears between gulps of agua ardiente and the daughters wailed, pulling their shawls over their eyes.

Posted by Anna at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)