Week 17: Atahualpa Yupanqui
Also included: Part 5 of The Book of Fables.
To Supay, Lord of the Ucu Pacha.
As much as music may be a universal language, and even without taking into account any lyrics it might have in an unknown language, it is surprisingly difficult for people to get into music that doesn't have a certain degree of familiarity. I have always lived a double life in the most basic sense of the word, having spent most of my life going back and forth between two cultures with very distinct musical traditions. These two musical traditions hardly ever intersect above the lowest common denominators – most Americans know J-Lo and Ricky Martin and most Puerto Ricans know Mariah Carey and Puff Daddy. Even those of us who live in places with strong exile communities, such as New York’s Puerto Rican community or El Condado’s American community, rarely get into the music beyond hearing it out of apartment or car windows. And one of the reasons few of us investigate the music coming from the other side of the tracks is that it's just not familiar enough. Not being familiar means first, that upon initial listenings everything just sounds the same and second, that we have no context within which to familiarize ourselves with it, no friend to introduce us, no blog to read about it, no way to relate it to our lives. It is only when one starts to get familiar with the music that one begins to distinguish the differences between one song and the next and one thus one begins to develop a taste for what one likes or doesn't like about it.
Throughout my life I have made various efforts to familiarize those around me with the music I like. It's kind of a fun game. I play you a song i like, you play me a song you like. Not unlike this blog. The success of such efforts varies. Playing the Butthole’s Sweat Loaf at a family get together was not successful. Playing Piero at my local dive was pretty successful. Playing Sonic Youth for my roommates in 1985 was not successful, playing Sonic Youth for my roommates in 1989 was very successful. Playing Piazzola is almost always successful in most circumstances, so is AC/DC. So here’s another attempt at familiarizing my surroundings with music I like.
Atahualpa Yupanqui is one of the dead guys I’ve listened to most of my life (though he wasn’t dead at first, he died in 1992). This is music I’ve heard since the very first days of my life. Music my mother listened to and her mother listened to. Not only was Yupanqui a great guitarist, writer, and singer, but he was also an archivist, ethnologist, and revivalist of South American folk music. The musical impact of Yupanqui on South American music can probably best be compared to Woody Guthrie’s impact on North American music.
Here he is singing El Alazan, a song about a dead horse.
And these are the translated lyrics for one of the songs on this week’s NAPcast. The other piece on the NAPcast is instrumental.
LOS EJES DE MI CARRETA (THE AXLES OF MY CART)
Because I don’t oil the axles, they say I’ve given up.
But I like the way they sound, why would I want ‘em oiled up?
It’s boring, too boring, following and following footsteps
Way too long the way, without something to distract me.
I don’t need silence. I don’t have anything to think.
I used to, but a long time ago, now I don’t think anymore.
The axles of my cart, I’m never going to oil ‘em.
What’s your experience with either introducing people to new music, or having others introduce new music to you?
And here’s part 5 of The Book of Fables*:
THE TEENAGER AND THE MOTIONLESS BUSKER
The center of the Universe is not the sun, not the Rod of Asclepius, not Mecca, not Mount Olympus, not Toronto, not that place were the Dr. Who ship landed. Some say that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle proves that it is impossible to accurately find the actual location of anything, much less the center of the Universe. Others even claim that there is no center at all in the Universe. They are all wrong. There is a center of the Universe, but like mathematical singularities it is difficult to define and not well behaved and like naked singularities it is infinitely dense and can break down the laws of physics and cause chaos in the cosmos. The children and grown ups will try to deny it, but the truth remains that The Teenager is the center of the Universe.
Sometime around her twelfth birthday, the daughter of María and the Folk Singer became The Teenager. As a child she had lived peacefully in the Basement Hippie Camp the way all children lived at the Basement Hippie Camp, but sometime after her twelfth birthday she began to get the urge to jump. She started jumping as she walked, jumping in one place, jumping over things, jumping all day long. And suddenly she started to feel the constraints of living in the Basement Hippie Camp. She wanted to jump higher than the low ceilings allowed, further than the long tunnels permitted. Finally one day she couldn’t take it any longer; she did like her mother before her, and leapt up the basement stairs and out the basement door. And once outside she took one big leap, the biggest leap of her life. She leapt so high she couldn’t see which direction she was moving, or how long the leap would last. Sometimes it felt like she could land at any moment, but other times she felt like she would be in the air for years. As she moved through the air in her jump she could feel the gravity of the world below her giving way, her own body in motion beginning to create its own gravitational pull until she could feel the earth moving around her instead of the other way around. Her gravitational pull continued to grow until she felt a strange instability that was at once stable, and she was confused. So she looked around and what she saw amazed her. Suddenly she could see the whole Universe revolving around her. From her central position she could see life and death, love and hate, beauty and ugliness, happiness and sadness, good and evil, movement and stasis, fate and choice, flexibility, idealism, horror, peace, madness, all of it. And she realized she was now the center of the Universe. She had become The Teenager.
Meanwhile, the Motionless Busker calmly sat on his spot. It was the same spot he had occupied since he had stopped moving, and that was so long ago that no one remembered a time when he moved. Actually very few people remembered him at all. Even though a multitude walked by him every day, few noticed him. He didn’t mind. He was used to seeing them walk by him as he sat on his spot, motionless except for his fingers moving on his old guitar and his lips singing his old songs. And the passing multitude ignored him. They ignored him cause he was always there, always playing his guitar, his songs never too loud, never too quiet, nothing about him caught anyone’s attention. Occasionally someone, without stopping to listen, would toss a guilty coin in his hat, but the hat never got full, yet it was never empty either. How did he eat, how did he go to the bathroom, how did he take care of the basic necessities of life? No one knew, and no one cared. And he sat there and played his songs and he was comfortable, hidden, and invisible as he sat quietly watching the parade of the world go by him. But that day someone was going to stop and listen to his song.
The newly discovered Universe was a whirlwind of activity for The Teenager. Having the whole Universe spinning around her was a dizzying, almost nauseating experience, so when The Teenager saw the Motionless Busker calmly sitting on his spot amidst the madness of the Universe, she was immediately attracted. Although the Universe seemed to move around her at millions of miles per second, when she saw the Motionless Busker, the Universe seemed to stop and she was able to focus her scattered attention on the static giant. “Hey little girl,” said the Motionless Busker, “Wanna hear a song?” And without waiting for a response he started playing the oldest song he knew. It was a song taught to him by the Mountain Marching Band, and who knew where they had learned it since they had been around much longer than most. It was a song that with long single notes reached into the darkest corners of the heart to let in a dirge-like, percussive guitar rhythm that would suddenly explode with melodic lines that pierced the heart from the inside out as if with cold sharp blades. It was a song that was very sad. And The Teenager cried, and the song forever got imprinted into her memory and she would never ever forget it. The Motionless Busker finished the song and started to say something to The Teenager, but she had already been distracted by something else in that Universe that spun around her and was gone before he could finish a sentence. But he had made an impression on her, and The Teenager started to learn to play the guitar and spent years trying to figure out how to play that song that had made her so sad that day with the Motionless Busker.
However, unbeknownst to The Teenager and the Motionless Busker, someone else had also stopped to listen to the sad song. The Large Head of the Composing Family was walking by when he heard the ancient sad song, and immediately recognized something special in it. Being an expertly trained musician he was able to quickly write the notes of the song into his little composing mini-notebook and even before the song was over, he was gone. That day when he arrived at his Composing Family home, he immediately gathered the family around and played the song for them on the piano, saying “Family, we have a winner here.”
Moral: If you want to make an impression on a teenager, play them a song you like.
*Since this story is actually turning into some kind of thing, I think I want to change the name of this to something else. Book of Fables is just not cutting it for me. Any suggestions?
To Supay, Lord of the Ucu Pacha.
As much as music may be a universal language, and even without taking into account any lyrics it might have in an unknown language, it is surprisingly difficult for people to get into music that doesn't have a certain degree of familiarity. I have always lived a double life in the most basic sense of the word, having spent most of my life going back and forth between two cultures with very distinct musical traditions. These two musical traditions hardly ever intersect above the lowest common denominators – most Americans know J-Lo and Ricky Martin and most Puerto Ricans know Mariah Carey and Puff Daddy. Even those of us who live in places with strong exile communities, such as New York’s Puerto Rican community or El Condado’s American community, rarely get into the music beyond hearing it out of apartment or car windows. And one of the reasons few of us investigate the music coming from the other side of the tracks is that it's just not familiar enough. Not being familiar means first, that upon initial listenings everything just sounds the same and second, that we have no context within which to familiarize ourselves with it, no friend to introduce us, no blog to read about it, no way to relate it to our lives. It is only when one starts to get familiar with the music that one begins to distinguish the differences between one song and the next and one thus one begins to develop a taste for what one likes or doesn't like about it.
Throughout my life I have made various efforts to familiarize those around me with the music I like. It's kind of a fun game. I play you a song i like, you play me a song you like. Not unlike this blog. The success of such efforts varies. Playing the Butthole’s Sweat Loaf at a family get together was not successful. Playing Piero at my local dive was pretty successful. Playing Sonic Youth for my roommates in 1985 was not successful, playing Sonic Youth for my roommates in 1989 was very successful. Playing Piazzola is almost always successful in most circumstances, so is AC/DC. So here’s another attempt at familiarizing my surroundings with music I like.
Atahualpa Yupanqui is one of the dead guys I’ve listened to most of my life (though he wasn’t dead at first, he died in 1992). This is music I’ve heard since the very first days of my life. Music my mother listened to and her mother listened to. Not only was Yupanqui a great guitarist, writer, and singer, but he was also an archivist, ethnologist, and revivalist of South American folk music. The musical impact of Yupanqui on South American music can probably best be compared to Woody Guthrie’s impact on North American music.
Here he is singing El Alazan, a song about a dead horse.
And these are the translated lyrics for one of the songs on this week’s NAPcast. The other piece on the NAPcast is instrumental.
LOS EJES DE MI CARRETA (THE AXLES OF MY CART)
Because I don’t oil the axles, they say I’ve given up.
But I like the way they sound, why would I want ‘em oiled up?
It’s boring, too boring, following and following footsteps
Way too long the way, without something to distract me.
I don’t need silence. I don’t have anything to think.
I used to, but a long time ago, now I don’t think anymore.
The axles of my cart, I’m never going to oil ‘em.
What’s your experience with either introducing people to new music, or having others introduce new music to you?
And here’s part 5 of The Book of Fables*:
THE TEENAGER AND THE MOTIONLESS BUSKER
The center of the Universe is not the sun, not the Rod of Asclepius, not Mecca, not Mount Olympus, not Toronto, not that place were the Dr. Who ship landed. Some say that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle proves that it is impossible to accurately find the actual location of anything, much less the center of the Universe. Others even claim that there is no center at all in the Universe. They are all wrong. There is a center of the Universe, but like mathematical singularities it is difficult to define and not well behaved and like naked singularities it is infinitely dense and can break down the laws of physics and cause chaos in the cosmos. The children and grown ups will try to deny it, but the truth remains that The Teenager is the center of the Universe.
Sometime around her twelfth birthday, the daughter of María and the Folk Singer became The Teenager. As a child she had lived peacefully in the Basement Hippie Camp the way all children lived at the Basement Hippie Camp, but sometime after her twelfth birthday she began to get the urge to jump. She started jumping as she walked, jumping in one place, jumping over things, jumping all day long. And suddenly she started to feel the constraints of living in the Basement Hippie Camp. She wanted to jump higher than the low ceilings allowed, further than the long tunnels permitted. Finally one day she couldn’t take it any longer; she did like her mother before her, and leapt up the basement stairs and out the basement door. And once outside she took one big leap, the biggest leap of her life. She leapt so high she couldn’t see which direction she was moving, or how long the leap would last. Sometimes it felt like she could land at any moment, but other times she felt like she would be in the air for years. As she moved through the air in her jump she could feel the gravity of the world below her giving way, her own body in motion beginning to create its own gravitational pull until she could feel the earth moving around her instead of the other way around. Her gravitational pull continued to grow until she felt a strange instability that was at once stable, and she was confused. So she looked around and what she saw amazed her. Suddenly she could see the whole Universe revolving around her. From her central position she could see life and death, love and hate, beauty and ugliness, happiness and sadness, good and evil, movement and stasis, fate and choice, flexibility, idealism, horror, peace, madness, all of it. And she realized she was now the center of the Universe. She had become The Teenager.
Meanwhile, the Motionless Busker calmly sat on his spot. It was the same spot he had occupied since he had stopped moving, and that was so long ago that no one remembered a time when he moved. Actually very few people remembered him at all. Even though a multitude walked by him every day, few noticed him. He didn’t mind. He was used to seeing them walk by him as he sat on his spot, motionless except for his fingers moving on his old guitar and his lips singing his old songs. And the passing multitude ignored him. They ignored him cause he was always there, always playing his guitar, his songs never too loud, never too quiet, nothing about him caught anyone’s attention. Occasionally someone, without stopping to listen, would toss a guilty coin in his hat, but the hat never got full, yet it was never empty either. How did he eat, how did he go to the bathroom, how did he take care of the basic necessities of life? No one knew, and no one cared. And he sat there and played his songs and he was comfortable, hidden, and invisible as he sat quietly watching the parade of the world go by him. But that day someone was going to stop and listen to his song.
The newly discovered Universe was a whirlwind of activity for The Teenager. Having the whole Universe spinning around her was a dizzying, almost nauseating experience, so when The Teenager saw the Motionless Busker calmly sitting on his spot amidst the madness of the Universe, she was immediately attracted. Although the Universe seemed to move around her at millions of miles per second, when she saw the Motionless Busker, the Universe seemed to stop and she was able to focus her scattered attention on the static giant. “Hey little girl,” said the Motionless Busker, “Wanna hear a song?” And without waiting for a response he started playing the oldest song he knew. It was a song taught to him by the Mountain Marching Band, and who knew where they had learned it since they had been around much longer than most. It was a song that with long single notes reached into the darkest corners of the heart to let in a dirge-like, percussive guitar rhythm that would suddenly explode with melodic lines that pierced the heart from the inside out as if with cold sharp blades. It was a song that was very sad. And The Teenager cried, and the song forever got imprinted into her memory and she would never ever forget it. The Motionless Busker finished the song and started to say something to The Teenager, but she had already been distracted by something else in that Universe that spun around her and was gone before he could finish a sentence. But he had made an impression on her, and The Teenager started to learn to play the guitar and spent years trying to figure out how to play that song that had made her so sad that day with the Motionless Busker.
However, unbeknownst to The Teenager and the Motionless Busker, someone else had also stopped to listen to the sad song. The Large Head of the Composing Family was walking by when he heard the ancient sad song, and immediately recognized something special in it. Being an expertly trained musician he was able to quickly write the notes of the song into his little composing mini-notebook and even before the song was over, he was gone. That day when he arrived at his Composing Family home, he immediately gathered the family around and played the song for them on the piano, saying “Family, we have a winner here.”
Moral: If you want to make an impression on a teenager, play them a song you like.
*Since this story is actually turning into some kind of thing, I think I want to change the name of this to something else. Book of Fables is just not cutting it for me. Any suggestions?
Labels: Book of Fables, Thursdays
13 Comments:
Best yet. I've finally put my finger on what's been nagging at my subconsciouc concerning your "fables." Rudyard Kipling. Especially the first paragraph of this one. It definitely has the "Just So Stories" vibe to it. If I were to reccomend any kind of renaming, it would be some sort of reference to Kipling or the Just So Stories, for just that reason. I'm really enjoying these, as I think most are. You absolutely must compile these into one volume and make it available to the masses. Or at least to us.
As for the video, I am woefully restricted from youtube gratification at work, so this will have to wait. Maybe I can find some Yupanqui on elbows. . .
Just So Stories
"My Life In The Bush Of Kipling"
hmmm....
I think you have mentioned having this torn sense of Cultural identity before, but I think you have a blessing of duality. And you have quite the humorous gift of story telling as well.
I think if you change the name, it would be cool if the title was an appeal to that duality... english and spanish combined.
Road de Rojas to the GlitterHaven!
Or something imaginative, you know? And don't be afraid to have a long ass name either.
Thanks for the music, it adds a memorable dimension to the songs that will be on the podcast.
your post adds a memorable dimension to the music... was what I meant to say.
You want, I can stay in here all day and jack your comments up with drivel?
I have a stack of How the leopard got his spots, one of Kiplings "Just So" stories. Al found them in the alley and gave them to me, I don't know why. Occasionally I stick them in packages that are heading out. Did I send you one Carlos?
I played a gig in Cleveland last year where I was given the "it all started here" punk lesson that I get every time I've played in Cleveland. I am interested in the stories but I'd heard this one before so last year I started to bring up the diy Texas punk scene from the mid 80's. The guy looked at me deadpan and said "you always find out your talking to a Texan in the first three minutes you meet him." He wasn't interested.
Everyone knows that the only singularity that really matters is the one which occurs when both Mournbong and Stonebringer, the Great Bongs of Power, are simultaneously wielded in the hands of one person. After taking hits off both bongs, the toker becomes all-powerful yet not all-knowing, and immediately destroys the universe with his ignorance.
Or *her* ignorance.
How that is relevant to the current fable, I am not sure. But I would be willing to bet that teenagers are a lot more impressionable when they've had a couple of bong hits.
SoR, thanks for the link, I've printed the whole bunch and they will very soon become my bus ride reading. Titles like 'The Cat that Walked by Himself' are exactly the kind of title that makes me want to read something, and 7-10 pages is just hte right length for my ADD self. When I'm done with my So So Stories, I will try to put them all together somehow, though I am incredibly bad at putting stuff out which is one of the reasons why this blog has been so good to me - i write it and its out.
SoH, I can't ever get enough of Morecock references for me. Was it here that someone quoted Mr. Cock giving a bad review to some Arthur Lee record? Anyways, although i very much like the Eric of Mensbone books, I think the Jerry Cornholious are far superior. Anyways, you are of course right about the effect of bonghits on teenager as i was definitely impressed by music from Peter Frampton to Saga to Kansas under those influences.
Kilian, you did not send me that. But I have learned that punk rock originated in every single town and city all at the same time in every country. And trying to tell someone that punk rock did not originate with their buddies band is like trying to tell a hippie that patchouli doesnt work.
And EM, please drivel on. I would mainline your drivel if I could. Actually I would chose your drivel over the Great Bongs of Power as fuel for the fevered brain of an insecure egotistical halfwit such as myself.
Mr. Cock did in fact write lyrics for at least one incarnation of Hawkwind, and - rumor has it - lives in Bastrop, of all places.
You must have made your saving throws when listening to Frampton while under the influence. Otherwise you would have had your soul sucked into the bong, to become one of the tiny bits of blackness clouding its bore.
I thought Mr. Cock was influencial in the creation of Hawkwind (Isn't Hawkwind the Eternal Gas of Hawkmoon the Eternal Champion?), and I thought he played with them or something at some point too. He also wrote lyrics for at least a couple of Blue Cockster Cult songs, including the most awesome Black Blade ("Forged a Million Year Ago, Black" and the echo responds "Blade, blade, blade, blade.") I know way more about this guy than I would admit face to face, good think I'm using a pseudonym here so no one knows who I really am...
as for Frampton, dude, he made his guitar talk, there aren't enough hit points in the multiverse for a teenager to survive that.
I am just this morning getting around to the backlog of NAP youtube videos, none of which I could watch at work this week. And damn, Carlos, this was beautiful. I must tell you, I was very moved by this song, and will definitely be seeking more from this man. I love the dynamics here. His voice is so gentle and full of sorrow, his guitar playing both sweet and powerful. Just wonderful. Thank you.
I had the benefit about 10 years back of being introduced to a friend of my parents, from college. He attended O(klahoma)SU on a student visa. He is now the Poet Laureat of the Gujarati state in India. In addition to he and his wife and daughter being delightful company and wonderful cooks, they introduced me to several Indian classical musicians. Among them were several tabla players, of course a sitar player, and a sarod player. The music was, to my 14 year old years, completely unlike anything I'd ever heard. It was sensuous, seductive, and had such addictive properties that, for about a year, all I would listen to was Ustad Amjad Ali Khan. I really need to figure out where I put those cds, as I think they'd find a receptive audience here.
SoR when you find those CDs let me know and i'll take a week off and you can do a post. If you'd like to.
SOR, please share Mr. Khan with the rest of us.
Those of us who still live in H-town are very fortunate to have the Indo American Association of Houston, who put on some of the most incredible shows you'll ever see here: including a couple of trips by Zakir Hussein (widely acknowledged as the greatest living tabla player) and many other well-known touring Indian artists, at the Wortham Center. They are always a blast and are very well attended. Anyone who lives in Houston and has any interest in this kind of music should go check out one of the shows they put on. One of the best kept secrets of the Houston "scene", in my humble opinion.
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