Category Archives: music

Cucurrucucú Paloma, Español-English

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Cucurrucucú Paloma is a Mexican Huapango song written by Tomás Méndez Sosa (25 July 1927 – 19 July 1995) in 1954. Huapango is a style of Mexican music and folk dance.

This song has always been popular, more recently in moving performances by Caetano Veloso in the 2002 Pedro Almodóvar movie Hable Con Ella (Talk To Her), and in concert.

Caetano Veloso (in the movie Hable Con Ella)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1emgUdD3_pE

Lola Beltran (the 1965 recording, dearest to Mexicans)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHW-q8oD3gE

Cucurrucucú Paloma – Ella & Lilah
http://youtu.be/NIfj44NjVNY
[My favorite version.]

The Spanish lyrics of Cucurrucucú Paloma are shown below followed by an English translation. It is impossible to match the poetry of the Spanish original with any translation. Mine is simply an attempt to convey in English the meaning of the song, with some suggestion of the cadences and rhyming pattern of the Spanish language original, without taking too many poetic liberties.

Cucurrucucú Paloma

Dicen que por las noches
no más se le iba en puro llorar;
dicen que no comía,
no más se le iba en puro tomar.
Juran que el mismo cielo
se estremecía al oír su llanto,
cómo sufriá por ella,
y hasta en su muerte la fue llamando.

Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay cantaba,
ay, ay, ay, ay, ay gemía.
Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay cantaba,
de pasión mortal moría.

Que una paloma triste
muy de mañana le va a cantar,
a la casita sola
con sus puertitas de par en par.
Juran que esa paloma
no es otra cosa más que su alma,
que todavía la espera
a que regrese la desdichada.

Cucurrucucú paloma,
cucurrucucú no llores.
Las piedras jamás, paloma,
¿qué van a saber de amores?

Cu……
(Final que hace Caetano Veloso.)

Cucurrucucú, cucurrucucú,
cucurrucucú, paloma, no llores.
(Final que hace Lola Beltran; su versión tiene unas diferencias de lo que se ve aqui.)

Cucurrucucú Paloma (translation)

They say through every nighttime
he was purely a flowing river of tears;
they say he wasn’t eating,
but drinking to drown out the pain that so sears.
They swear that even the night skies
shudder with pity to his sad wails and sharp cries,
for her, oh he was suffering,
and vainly calls out past the death where she now lies.

Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay he’s singing,
ay, ay, ay, ay, ay he’s moaning.
Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, he’s singing,
and from mortal passion dying.

A Mourning Dove sad and lonesome
at dawn its song will be cooed for your ears,
the cottage still is waiting
with wide open doors emptying fears.
They swear that Mourning Dove cooing
is surely the very soul of your darling,
that is still so sweetly awaiting
her return to his love never-ending.

Cucurrucucú paloma,
cucurrucucú no crying.
The stones we walk on, paloma,
will never know about our loving.

Cu….
(The ending of the song as performed by Caetano Veloso.)

Cucurrucucú, cucurrucucú,
cucurrucucú, paloma, no crying.
(The ending of the song as performed by Lola Beltran; her version has other differences from what is shown here.)

Lágrimas Negras — Español-English

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Lágrimas Negras
[Trio Matamoros, 1929]

Aunque tú
me has dejado en el abandono,
aunque tú
has muerto todas mis ilusiones,
en vez de maldecirte
con justo encono,
en mis sueños te colmo,
en mis sueños te colmo
de bendiciones.
(2X)

Sufro la inmensa pena de tu extravío,
siento el dolor profundo
de tu partida
y lloro sin que sepas
que el llanto mío
tiene lágrimas negras,
tiene lágrimas negras
como mi vida.
(1X)

Tú me quieres dejar,
yo no quiero sufrir
contigo me voy mi santa
aunque me cueste morir.
(3X con dos intermedios cortos)

Black Tears
(a © translation of “Lágrimas Negras”)

Although you
have left me desolate with your abandon,
although you
have been death to my every illusion
instead of cursing you now
with justified rancor,
in my dreams I enshrine you,
in my dreams I enshrine you
with benediction.
(2X)

Immensity of pain I suffer over losing you,
my feelings so profoundly hurt
torn by your parting.
I cry without your knowing
and that lonely crying
weeps out a stream of black tears,
weeps out a stream of black tears
and all my living.
(1X)

You want leaving me
I can’t suffering be
so with you I go my darling
even it costs me dying.
(3X with 2 short breaks)

[It is impossible for me to match the poetry of the Spanish original in an English translation. Let me know if you perform “Black Tears” successfully.]

Trio Matamoros
(the original from 1931, classic, precious)

 

another posting of the 1931 recording;

Los Guaracheros del Oriente
(classic roots music, 2007, [get past the ad])
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpDL1NxAoS4

Compay Segundo
(old guys doing it lush and making it their own, not long before 2003)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jpz7AHw0zo

“Cuba Feliz”
(street music in Cuba, 2000, with Miguel Del Morales)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tozhe0yTAqo

Lágrimas Negras – Raquel Zozaya (2010)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShikbqIPa0U
[Bolero Son nace en 1929 con Lágrimas Negras; un poco de historia explicado aqui. Bolero Son is born in 1929 with Lágrimas Negras; some history explained here.]

Javier García (2002)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC7Ic34EFfo (Javier’s posting, with a cute video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H33uaBouyU (has richer sound; & picture, no video)
[A very “young” and modern “songo” (like “rock” + “son”) version, hip; has Arturo Sandoval on trumpet. Good songs go on forever!] (García: no relation)

Cover Estereo Son (2012)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46Fi6Pup4A4
[Four young musicians (in Colombia?); both very svelte and very full playing and singing from an economical ensemble: singer, piano, bass, percussion.]

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The Promise Of Remembered Soundtracks

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How do you tell your teenager about your past, when you were their age, and not bore them to exasperation within thirty seconds with your sloppy nostalgia? I don’t know. Nevertheless, that was the impetus for writing my article published today.

The Promise Of Remembered Soundtracks
7 October 2013
http://www.swans.com/library/art19/mgarci72.html

In Tony Judt’s essay “Hannah Arendt and Evil” (1995), which is included in his book Reappraisals, Judt described the drive of people like Arthur Koestler, Primo Levi, Manès Sperber and Hannah Arendt to keep an accurate memory of the past, which they experienced, alive in the present:

“They were all ‘chance survivors of a deluge,’ as she [Hannah Arendt] put it in a 1947 dedication to [Karl] Jaspers, and wherever they ended up, in New York, Paris, or Rome, they were constrained, like Camus’s Sisyphus, to push the boulder of memory and understanding up the thankless hill of public forgetting for the rest of their lives.”

I am an incidental survivor of the Vietnam War, and “The Promise Of Remembered Soundtracks” is about that and popular music. For some readers it will also be about children and continuity. I am not claiming profundity or great insight here, merely truthfulness in recollection. I have been remembering the past, and my past, spurred by the questioning of a child of today emerging as an adult. I hope you listen to the music I cite in this article (skip the ads).

The first installment of my reminiscences (no music) was:

Overtones Of Awareness
8 September 2013
http://www.swans.com/library/art19/mgarci70.html

I’ll end here with this from 1971 (the best year of my life):

“Blue Sky”, Duane Allman’s Solo, at Stonybrook, 1971-09-19
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSDf2Usd8n4

Thanks, Skydog.

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Russell Means, and Red Pacific

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I thought of the memorial to Russell Means by Brenda Norrell:

Russell Means: Warrior for the People
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/26/47134/

when I listened to this song:

Hoodoo Rhythm Devils — “Red Pacific” (1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgwfCijY7Bg

When I look back I see so much lost potential, paradise wasted…