So, I went to school today, and one of my new students is named Azucena. It’s a beautiful name – it means Lily, but I was so surprised that she didn’t know the line from the old song that (I’m strongly willing to bet) she’s named after. I know that sounds terribly presumptuous on my part, but it’s not a common name, and you might guess at an equally musical origin if you met someone named, say, Jolene.
The song is called Rogaciano El Huapanguero (Rogaciano the Huapango singer – huapango is a kind of song); but Rogaciano’s name never appears in the song itself. Rather, it’s a lament for his death, and in the song he is called the “trovero” (troubadour) and the “pregonero” (from the latin, praeco, roughly, town crier). Not only do the words illustrate the importance of the singer as a chronicler and news-giver (and the direct link of the these old sones to a bardic tradition, but the placement of his name in the title and of his role within the song always implied to me that the lament is less about the loss of the individual (Rogaciano) and more about the loss of a vital role in the community (the bard).
The line with my student’s name is beautifully consonant: “La Azucena y La Cecilia lloran lloran sin consuelo” (Azucena and Cecilia weep, weep, inconsolably – I’m clearly not a good poetic translator). The names of the mourners evoke both death (azucena means Lily) and music (St. Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians). At least, that’s what my subjective ears hear- an argument could be made that marigolds are more symbolic of death in Mexico, and lillies more traditionally associated with purity).
I get caught up in the language of grief in the song – the countryside itself is in mourning, “La huasteca esta de luto”; even the sugar cane mill mourns and sighs with each turn, “El trapiche está de duelo/Y suspira en cada vuelta“.
Itunes only has the Linda Rondstadt version – good enough, but not as haunting as the Lola Beltran version playing in my head.
A frustrating youtube search yields seemingly every one of Lola’s rancheras except Rogaciano. It does turn up a charming video of a very young Lola singing La Cigarra in one of her movies:
Originally sung by Jorge Negrete, it’s a huapango (maybe once upon a time Rogaciano sang it), and in a different way, it’s also about death:
Ya no me cantes cigarra
Que acabe tu sonsonete
Que tu canto aquí en el alma
Como un puñal se me mete
Sabiendo que cuando cantas
Pregonado vas tu muerte.
She begs the cigarra (cicada) to stop singing. It’s too painful to hear – a stab to her soul – (“…aqui en el alma/Como un puñal se me mete) because she knows that the cicada announces its own death with the song (“pregonando vas tu muerte”). At the key change, she begins to meditate on the profundity of her unhappiness – she asks a sailor if there’s any color in the depths of the ocean as black as her sorrow- and on the elusiveness of love – a wounded dove bemoans about unrequited love.
Here’s a second video of the same song with terrible sound quality, but irresistible because of the Scarlett-worthy hoopskirt and majestic hand gestures:
In the end, she reconsiders the song of the cicada as an exhortation to live fully rather than as a harbinger of death.
Bajo la sombra de un árbol
Y al compás de mi guitarra
Canto alegre este huapango
Porque la vida se acaba
Y quiero morir cantando
Como muere la cigarra.
She happily sings her huapango under the shade of a tree, and wishes to die singing her song, like the cicada. I love the sentiment, but the metaphor of the brief and musical life of the cicada isn’t at all fitting for Bueli, who died quietly at 99.
Youtube also keeps insisting that what I *really* want from Lola is Cucurrucu Paloma.
I can offer no resistance to either the song (if you’ve lived with me for any amount of time, I’m sure you’ve been forced to myriad versions of it ad infinitum), or the sparkly grande dame herself. However, this is a favorite of mine, not Bueli’s, who may have liked it or just found it maudlin (I’ll have to ask Mom).
One cliché yields another, and it’s a short path from Cucurrucucu to La Llorona.
From the same concert:
Again, this is an iconic song and a perennial favorite of mine, and I think someone once told me that Bueli’s husband- my abuelo Exiquio liked it- but I never once heard Bueli express an interest in the song. Since she was neither sentimental nor mystic, it’s another inappropriate sentiment.
Of course, I just can’t think of La Llorona without thinking of the incomparable Chavela Vargas. A video search from her yielded this fairly incredible (and simple) version of “No Volvere” (roughly, “I’m Not Coming Back”).
It’s plenty sad and there’s crying aplenty – tears of rage and memorably, a flood – swollen river of tears the singer will drown the memory of the lover in, (mi llanto ha formado/Un arroyo de olvido anegado/Donde yo tu recuredo ahogare) - but it’s a song about lost love, rather than death. I
t’s also an indication that my search for the right song, long since evolved from just the namesake of my student to the right tribute for Bueli- has gone off the rails. Bueli will rain down lightning bolts on my head just for including Chavela Vargas (a hard-drinking, hard-living lesbian), anywhere near thoughts of her, a lifelong (and devout) Methodist.
The truth is, all of the songs are wrong, and I reach an impasse. Suddenly: an insight. It’s obvious to see Bueli’s influence in our shared commonalities: teaching, an insatiable love of history and literatury, rampant Euro-philia. Although she spent her first years (during revolution, that inspiration for a thousand corridos) on a ranch in the desert, she is no more of the ranch than I perceive myself to be of the sprawling suburb I grew up in. These rancheras, which she may or may not have liked, are not something we share. Rather, my lifelong love of these old songs comes not only from hours spent on roadtrips listening to my parents tapes, but from a desire for a connection with the grandparents I never met, especially my abuelo Exiquio and (from the other side of the family) my abuela Mercedes. Exiquio was an outdoorsy man and a lifelong whistler of tunes; his marriage to Bueli was a case of “opposites attract”.
The right music reveals itself in an anecdote Mom told me on the long drive down to Piedras. I’ve always been more or less familiar with how my grandparents met, but I didn’t know that there was a rival and suitor before Exiquio. This must have been in the late teens or early twenties – this young man would visit her at her parents house, and she would sit at the piano and play Schubert’s Serenade. And there it is: that’s the song that Bueli would have loved as a tribute. That’s the song that expresses a poignance that I’m too clumsy to articulate.
So, here’s the song for my Abuelita.
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