Mary

They say that the song is about a certain Mary: Martha's and Lazarus' sister. Maria and Martha pledged for the resuscitation of Lazarus. A miracle like this wipes hesitations about whether or not Jesus is the Messiah or only a prophet. If so, the song is a religious statement.

But she is not the only Mary in the Bible. Maybe she is Maria Magdalena: this Mary cries for the lost of the one who, by means of compassion, sees his humanity in the human drama of the other. If so, the song is about the human seed fostered by the heart.

She could be, nevertheless, a third Mary: the one who cleaned Jesus feet with balm and wipped them with her hair. She cried of joy for the forgiveness of her sins. If so, the song is about hope.

Maybe they were the same woman...

I think, however, that weeping Mary is the sinner one. And only the sinner. The liberty will free the bodies of the slaves, like other bodies were liberated from the Pharaoh. Whereas the grace of God will embrace the faithful souls: no matter if they sinned. There's no reason to cry, there's hope, even if you feel like a feather in the air.

On Earth as it is in Heaven

Earth

"The first function of music, especially of folk music, is to produce a feeling of security for the listener, by voicing the particular quality of a land and the life of its people. To the traveler, a line from a familiar song may bring back all the familiar emotions of home, for music is a magical summing-up of the patterns of family, of love of conflict, and of work which gave a community its special feel and which shape the personalities of its members. Folk song calls the native back to his roots and prepares him emotionally to dance, worship, work, fight, or make love in ways normal to his place." Lomax, A., The Folk Songs of North America. In the English Language (p. xv)

Down in the valley, the valley so low

Hang your head over, hear the wind blow

Hear the wind blow, dear, hear the wind blow;

Hang your head over, hear the wind blow.

Roses love sunshine, violets love dew,

Angels in Heaven know I love you,

Know I love you, dear, know I love you,

Angels in Heaven know I love you.

Heaven

"This was a psalter in whose margins was delineated a world reversed with respect to the one to which our senses have accustomed us.  As if at the border of a discourse that is by definition the discourse of truth, there proceeded, closely linked to it, through wondrous allusions in aenigmate, a discourse of falsehood on a topsy-turvy universe, in which dogs flee before the hare, and deer hunt the lion."

Eco, U., The Name of the Rose (p. 76)

"American dancing rhymes were cryptic and allusive, relying on wild, zany images to convey hidden erotic meaning. Here they were met more than half-way by the songs of the Negroes, which concealed beneath their surface innocence a world of irony and protest, and by the funny songs of the blackface minstrels, which were silly, but sometimes amusing parodies on the Negro jingles. All were rooted in an old Celtic type which turned the world upside down and inside out...

You should have seen the eel with his pipes, playing a broadside,
The lark with its nest in the gander's beard,
The water-hen crooning and playing the Jew's harp,
The church leaping and dancing all over the valley

"Americans have created many such darn-fool ditties out of non-sequiturs and splintered images - songs which, like surrealist paintings, mirror the swift turbulence of modern life. They recall that mythical bird, the Kansas jay-hawk 'that flies backwards because he doesn't care where he is going' bat wants to know where he's been. When you hear the old jay-hawk squawlin' you know that if something' ain't happened, it's goin' to.'" Lomax. op. cit. (p. xxiii)

Between a kiss and a knife

Kiss

The last two days I've been trying to remember what's the first song in my mind. Not in a ranking sense but in  a chronological way . As soon as I started  to think about it, I discarded the primary school songs, as well as the different variations of birthday or lullaby songs. Since I was looking for songs that connect with my personal moments. I failed to remembered it. But suddenly I realized that I still keep, in my mother's home in Mexico, my very first record: "Presumido 78", a black vinyl single, 45 RPM, recorded by Kiss.

Maybe I was eight years old when I got it. Maybe my parents gave it to me for my birthday because I asked them to do it or maybe I bought it saving the coins that they gave me every other Sunday. Anyway it's a present from them. Why? I don't know, but I think that it was because they loved me and they liked music. Although, I am pretty sure that they dislike this kind of music. They prefered Mexican folk songs. And the Beatles and Elvis Presley, but certainly not the Rolling Stones nor Led Zeppelin. They didn't speak English, but liked catchy, dancing tunes and that's all.

In this way they were more honest than me. Because I also didn't speak English. I didn't understand what the song was about. And I don't remember why I liked the music itself. I don't know what to think about all this misunderstanding. But now I realize that I wasn't alone in my incomprehension. Because the original title is "Strutter" and the record label translated it as "Presumido". I agree: in a general meaning, to strut is presumir. In English the adjective is the same for boys and girls: strutter. But in Spanish the adjective varies according to the gender: presumido (boy) or presumida (girl). The problem is that the song is about a girl and not a boy!

They mistranslate the title. Or maybe not. Maybe they were marketing geniuses that realized that their target was male consumers, that wanted to brag (presumir) about they have the newest single of Kiss. In this sense, they knew more about me than I knew about my self.

But what did I want to brag about? That's an easy question: the cover photo. It still mesmerizes me. The customs, the make-up, the fist's language and... the tongue! The attitude mesmerizes me since I was a child at such level that I, and thousands more, went to a concert of Kiss in Mexico City, back in the nineties, almost 20 years after the record was released. I fear that everyone at this concert were nostalgic presumidos that didn't understand what the songs were about, but wanted to see fireworks, fake blood and high-heeled seniors on the stage, pretending to be the youngsters that they and we were... Or maybe all that was just another marketing business...

Knife

Knocking the doors of the memory I remembered a song that makes me feel happy, close to my parents. We were in a Summer trip to Michoacan. We went to Tzararacua waterfalls. I think that I was five or six years old. After the promenade through the park, I was sat with my mom waiting for my dad. Maybe he went to the bathroom. When he returned he got with him a puppet.

I think that it was the first time I saw one of them. Of this kind, I mean, with treads moving limbs and head. I was so dumb when I tried to play it. My father looked my frustration, took the puppet and started to play it, the puppet was dancing while my dad sang a song about some guy named Juan Charrasqueado. My frustration disappeared and became happiness. And my father had to sing Juan Charrasqueado and play the puppet (Juan, of course) all that Summer.

Last Spring I realized that the song that my father sang while playing Juan was very different from the mexican corrido with the same name. I don't know why. I only know that during the Mexican Revolution, men soldiers were nicknamed Juan - the same way that during French Revolution men were Jacques.  And I also know that charrasca is a knife. Thus Juan Charrasqueado was a revolutionary soldier who was wounded by or armed with a knife. For me, Juan is a puppet that danced on the edge of a waterfall and took me from isolating frustration to delighting warmth.