American in Spain

Several weeks ago, when we were on our way to run some errands, Nora started singing something. It sounded like gibberish to me – and she does often sing and talk gibberish – but it was slightly more structured than her normal babble. Also, she repeated it verbatim a few times. I inquired as to what she was singing, and she told me that it was a song that her Tía Belén had taught her. At this point I realized it must be a song in Basque.
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When my parents last visited, I got to hear my mother sing songs to my daughter that I haven’t heard since I was a child and she was singing to me. One of them was this rhyme that Nora has come to call “July”, since she loves to emphasize the ultimate word. It goes like this:

I asked my mother for fifty cents
To see the elephant jump the fence.
He jumped so high,
He reached the sky,
And didn’t come down ’til the fourth of July

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Over the past two years, a song by an Australian group, Yolanda Be Cool, called We No Speak Americano (known colloquially as Papa Americano), has swept across Europe. Every so often a Spaniard who knows that I am both a United States citizen and a father, will think they are being clever and original by calling me “Papa Americano” and singing a bar or two of the hit song. I think it’s cute, and I enjoy the song, so I decided to make it my ringtone. Over the course of the last few months, my daughter has fallen in love with my ringtone, often reminding me out of the blue, “Poppy, your phone says papa americano!!”, adding, “Sometimes.”
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In 2007, Matt Morris, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, directed a short film about a barber shop near where I grew up. One of the owners of the shop, David Shirley, the well spoken gentleman with the full head of white hair in the movie, is the father of one of my best friends and guitar mentor, Phil Shirley. The movie does an excellent job of capturing a dying southern American small town bluegrass culture.
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Apple finally launched their iTunes Match service this week. If you don’t know what that is, I’ll explain briefly. In the eight years since Apple opened their iTunes Music Store, they have been amassing an enormous collection of digitized music that they have the legal right to sell. If you buy a song from them, and your computer crashes, you can redownload that song again whenever you like, since, rather than a physical medium like a CD, what you’ve bought is the right to have that digital file.
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Tonight we went to see one of our favorite musicians, Rosana, in Santander. We saw her once before in 2007 and were absolutely floored by her genuine kindness and generosity as a performer. This time, rather than being in a venue where we could go right up to the stage if we so wished, we were in a theater, with assigned seats. Also, for some reason she was touring just before her new album comes out (later this month), so there were many songs that no one in the audience had heard before. I understand the business need to debut some new material, but the audience at a concert comes almost exclusively to hear songs they already know. She commented several times about how strange it was to sing to a crowd sitting down quietly listening.
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No, this isn’t a post about a night at a karaoke bar. After noticing some singing ability in Spanish, I’ve been teaching Nora some English songs. Actually, for some reason, the first song I taught her was Frère Jacques in French. Lately when we sing that one, on the last line, she lifts up her shirt and touches her navel, which she calls her “ding dong” after so many doorbell jokes. The first English song was Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, which she picked up pretty quickly, enjoying gesturing to the sky on the “like a diamond in the sky” line.
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From what I can tell, the song chorus best known across all of Hispanic culture, both in Iberia and the Americas, is probably that of Cielito Lindo. Since I learned it some years ago, I can’t help thinking it to myself anytime anyone says more than one “Ay!”, which is fairly often. The chorus goes like this, which I won’t bother to translate, since the Wikipedia page does such a good job:

Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Canta y no llores,
Porque cantando se alegran,
Cielito lindo, los corazones.

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At some point in every parenting journey, there comes a time when you have to teach your child about your favorite recording artist. Recently when I was preparing Nora’s lunch, I put my iPhone into iPod mode to play a random shuffling of my top rated music. I let it play throughout her lunch and when she was done eating, I decided to teach her to say “Dave Matthews”. She picked it up pretty quickly, so I pulled out the video camera.
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Today I became aware that the little fishing village where I live has a town hymn, an anthem to celebrate what it means to be from Colindres. Both to ensure that I understand it fully, and to share it with my non-hispanophone audience, I have translated it into English. It really is quite beautiful. I hope to one day hear or see or record a performance of it, as it would be nice to hear the music and voices booming with pride.
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