Monday 9 February 2009

Sometimes - Ignorance Is Bliss

A good 18 months before falling in love with a beautiful Chilean woman I worked, for a short period, with a Chilean guy. Manuel (his real name was Miguel but for some reason a few of us decided to give him a new nickname and settled on the Spanish waiter from Fawlty Towers as our inspiration) and I, had one thing in common in that we both loved music to such an extent we both had thousands of tracks we could share with one another. I had a large collection of European, African and Antipodean music whilst he had a mostly Spanish speaking music that up until that point I didn't have access to. The job that we were doing together was the most boring job you can imagine but it did have one saving grace in that we able to listen to a lot of music and during that time I discovered that I really liked some of the Puerto Rican, Columbian and Chilean music which seemed upbeat and lively but Mexican music in contrast I just couldn't get into at all. Even as a non Spanish speaking person it just sounded too damn depressing.
It didn't help the case when Manuel described Mexican music mostly being songs where the singer sung about something they had lost whether that was their girlfriend, their wife, their horse, their dog or even a bottle of tequila depened on the song. Now as a non Spanish speaker I had no idea whether he was generalising or just joking but judging by the sound of his Mexican music collection it seemed somewhat plausible.
But they was one Mexican song that I liked (see Below) because to my uneducated ears it sounded like a love song.
Most Spanish music that I like is a little too fast for me to keep up with for me to sing along to but this song is just about slow enough for me to do just that. The fact I didn't really have a clue what was being said didn't do anything to diminish my enjoyment of it. Lately I've found myself trying, and failing badly, to learn Spanish so I thought I would look up the lyrics to Y Me Quede Suspirando by Duelo on babelfish.
Ah. Yeah.
I'm now thinking that even though it is a love song, of sorts, that maybe Manuel wasn't just playing with our ignorance when he described Mexican music. Maybe, just maybe he was telling the truth.

Listening to: Y Me Quede Suspirando - Duelo

1 comment:

Some Chilean Woman said...

I'll do my best to keep you ignorant then...no Spanish lessons for you.