The Radio

Not every house has a TV, but it seems like just about everyone has a radio.  

Doña Elena next door has a radio that she turns on around  6:30 a.m.  Because of the design of her kitchen, the sound is amplified and is easily heard on the street, for the morning sweeping ritual. She turns it off at 8 because the progamming changes from the rancheras that she likes, to a different style. In fact, when the programming changes to “banda”, she ruthlessly turns off the radio mid-phrase. Doña Elena has a favorite song, Que Me Lleve El Diablo, and whenever it is played, she sings - very loudly, and tunelessly - in her yard.

The radio stations in Mexico are of different types, just like in the US.  There are stations that play modern pop, some that play banda music (imagine a German tuba band playing music in Spanish), rap and dance music, cumbias and other Latin dance music, mariachi music, talk stations (mostly pro-goverment), etc.  The  style of music that I most like to hear  on the  radio is ranchera.  There are beautiful songs and some very good voices, from the forties and later.  Another wonderful genre is trio music from the forties and fifties.  The songs are very much like what are called standards in the US, with gorgeous extended harmonies. They are composed and performed by male trios with very, very  good guitar playing.

The sixties and seventies in Mexico produced excellent pop music. Much of it originated in the States. Imagine hearing, in Spanish, Twist and Shout, Going To The Chapel,  Tan Shoes With Pink Shoelaces, The Name Game, With Just A Hundred Pounds Of Flesh, I’ll Do My Crying In The Rain, Won’t You Be My Baby!  I recently heard Neal Sedaka sing in Spanish Next Door To An Angel! Many excellent songs were written during these years in Mexico, Spain and other Latin American countries, as well as Italy.

There were many good Mexican actors and actresses, too, from that era, some of whom came to the US to make films.  (Dolores Del Rio, Anthony Quinn, and El Indio Fernandez are some that are known in the US.)

After Doña Elena turns off her radio, we turn ours on, and at about 8:20 every day there is a dramatic serial called Porfirio Cadena - El Ojo De Vidrio, from the fifties.  Imagine the announcer with lots of echo and effect introducing the program.  The story is described as “violent, audacious, etc.” It is an episodic story about a (in)famous (imaginary) bandit.  He is called El Ojo De Vidrio because he has a glass eye.  His entire family was killed by a traitorous acquaintances when he was a child.  He saw the killings, and afterwards the killers tortured him by cutting out his eye with a sharp branch.  Porfirio  lives to take his revenge on his powerful enemies, and accumulates an enormous treasure. The character seems to soften as he ages, but when he is young, and beginning his career as an outlaw, he is cruel and violent, although fair, wreaking his own concept of justice.

At night, at 10:30 p.m. the same station plays another serial adventure called Caliman, El Hombre Increible, the incredible man. The current story is called The Black Widow.

The voices of the actors are quite dramatic, typical of the fifties,  and both serials are very entertaining.  The sound effects and the incidental music are wonderful. After each episode ends we speculate about how Porforio or Caliman will escape from his most recent capture or predicament, and what is happening with the other characters.

There are annoying commercials, just like on the radio stations in the US.  I particularly dislike hearing childrens' voices say “Wow!” and continue in Spanish. The government touts itself in endless commercials, bragging about “transparency”, “equality” and “fairness”.  There are many ads for drug stores, and for natural health products, which are very popular here.

Learning Spanish As An Adult

I admit it - I have been learning Spanish for about 25  years, although I was never truly focused on that goal until recently (necessity being a strong motivator). 


And I’ll explain here a sort of pet peeve. Beginning of soapbox: I think it’s an odd way to discuss learning languages by using the term “my” French, or “my” Japanese. I’m quite sure I used that term before, (when I was but a child!) but now it seems annoying to me to describe a language as belonging to you when what you are really discussing is your fluency and skills. 

I also feel strongly that if a person chooses to live in a country with a different national language, he or she should strive to learn the language. The citizens of the US practically demand it of immigrants, and in Mexico, I have noticed that people in general really appreciate it when I try to converse with them, even though I make lots and lots of mistakes. Lots! End of soapbox.

Somehow I thought that I would wait, silently learning, until I could speak nearly perfectly to start trying. That is not a satisfactory method of learning. (Duh! As a teacher, I surely should have known better!) Now I just jump in, and I probably make one or more mistakes in every other sentence. Everything is different - the sounds, and the word order: nouns have genders in Spanish, too.

Anyway, I began to learn Spanish, I would have to say, from singing songs in Spanish - and, by the way, it was hard for me to believe that so much music had been so completely unknown to me. There was an entire repertoire of popular music in Spanish that I was completely unaware of! I had heard two popular Spanish songs in the seventies that made a deep impression on me. I even remember where I was when I first heard them. 

Beginning of ramble:

The first of the two songs was performed by a singer named Jose Jose (although I didn’t know his name at the time). It was called La Barca Del Olvido. One reason I think I liked it so much was that I could understand a lot of the chorus, probably from singing in Italian. The chorus lyrics begin 

Espera un poco, un poquito mas,

Para llevarte mi felicidad.

and I would say that means

Wait a little, just a little more,

To take away my happiness.

The memorable part of the chorus employs a musical device called melodic sequence, the repetition of a melodic phrase at different levels of pitch. 

The other song was by a group called Mocedades, from Spain. It is a very beautiful, famous, meaningful love song, and won a world-level prize in a songwriting competition. Its title is Eres Tu, and it is still very well-known. The beginning of the chorus, roughly translated, is

You are like the water in my fountain,

You are the flame in my hearth,

You are the wheat in m y bread,

Hmm - it's so much more beautiful in Spanish!! No wonder I've never heard an English translation!

End of rambling aside.

I began to sing and perform songs in Spanish in the mid-eighties. From my traditional music training I knew that it was essential not just to sing the sounds of the language, but to understand them, and I translated every word, with Chon’s patient help. I learned and performed many songs. 

But the first time I visited Mexico I didn’t understand anything at all. I could speak “food” pretty well, with reasonably good pronunciation, and that was it. In our house Chon and I only spoke English, so I really never praticed speaking Spanish unless I was in Mexico, and that was only for one, two, or three weeks every year. I tried, though, and Chon’s family was patient, too. They didn’t have much choice, really, and they always treated me extremely well. There are very few people in our little town even now who speak English. And something I have noticed is that even though students here take classes in English, they do not learn to speak it. There seems to be no “Conversational English” offered. Even students who get high grades in English only can read it (a little).

In case you have never thought about it, an English speaker must learn to use different muscles to correctly pronounce Spanish, so for many English speakers our speech will always have a big, fat accent, and we sound to Spanish speakers just as many adults who learn English sound to us English speakers. (Congratulations if you were able to follow that sentence!)

Anyway, I’d like to encourage anyone to learn a new language. If it interests you, or if you are motivated for some reason, give it a try! There are lots of good classes in the states. If you learn some beginning Spanish, your hispanic friends will enjoy your efforts, and it’s probably really good exercise for the brain.