The Day Everything Changed (Musically Speaking)

I’m thinking back to the moment I realized the world had changed irrevocably. No, I’m not referring to the pandemic, which roared into our lives a year ago this month. I’m going further back, to the moment that shifted my musical tastes in a way that continues to this day.

That instant came in 2005 when I somehow landed on a Latin radio station and heard the 2002 song “Soy Mujer” (I am a Woman) by the Puerto Rico-born salsa singer La India (a/k/a Linda  Bell Viera Caballero). The pulsating music and La India’s blazing, passionate voice grabbed my attention. It also helped that my meager knowledge of Spanish enabled me to understand the title.

Her vocal performance was so dramatic and captivating that I had to go get the CD, probably at Tower Records or the Virgin Megastore. Her videos show a bold physical presence that fills the screen and demands attention. She knows how to belt ‘em out, sort of like a salsa version of French singer Edith Piaf. I loved the rest of her music and began checking out every Latin CD I could find at the Westport and Greenwich libraries in Connecticut.

I had already started moving toward being a big fan Latin music. I grew up on the Texas-Mexico border so I knew about that Tex-Mex genre, even if I didn’t pay attention to it at the time. It pulsed in the background, on the other side of the tracks of Mission, Texas. I had albums by El Chicano, Malo and Santana and liked them all (the Tijuana Brass probably doesn't count). A 2004 trip to São Paulo, Brazil supercharged my interest in all the music from there, so much that I started studying Brazilian Portuguese.

I still like other genres, of course: the Great American Songbook, classic jazz, blues, opera, Israeli and most recently a yen for the bewitching and sinuous sounds of Afro-pop. But Latin music now pulses in the background and foreground of my musical devotions.

So what happens when the world changes? We all know too well the impact of the pandemic. What about when La India rocked my music world in four minutes?

This turned my CD collection in a completely different direction. I had never been much for CDs, favoring vinyl. But given the chance to get Latin CDs, I did, starting in Brazil and never stopping. The Goodwill stores in the area provide me some great buys. I even took a Jewish humanitarian trip to Cuba in 2008, where I was excited about scooping up as many CD sets as possible (and I did). I find them always listenable and a great way to improve my Spanish listening skills.

Then, in the years BC—before COVID—was always looking for concerts. Gal Costa at Carnegie Hall to the Texas Tornadoes and also Lila Downs at Celebrate Brooklyn to Los Texmaniacs at Ridgefield’s Ballard Park, I’ve gone far and wide to hear Latin music. Lila Downs, from Mexico, has the big voice and commanding presence of La India, and a very political message. 

Lila Downs in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, 2017

For my walks around Katonah, a favorite podcast is the Latin Alternative, just the right length at an hour for a lunch ramble.

Latin music often has a political and social edge. A documentary series on Netflix, Break It All: The History of Rock in Latin America, covered the musical aspect of political convulsions in Mexico, Chile and Argentina in the 60s to the 80s. A documentary I watched this week showed a concert by Los Tigres del Norte at Folsom Prison, 50 years after Johnny Cash’s epic performance there. I keep looking and learning. 

Los Texmaniacs, 2014

And finally, the music has a retrospective aspect. It connects me with where I grew up. I didn’t pay attention to the border music that surrounded me growing up, but now I do now. I enjoy the accordion-driven sounds of Tex-Mex music and I look forward to heading back to the Rio Grande Valley for a high school reunion and hearing some with old compadres (I call them Landsmen, they call me Carnal, a mashup of Yiddish and Spanish affections). 

Latin music even intersected with that other, more world-historic first moment, when the pandemic began. I had tickets for my partner Naomi and me to see Mariachi Los Camperos at the State University of New York at Purchase—on March 20, 2020. As you can guess, that concert never happened.

Maybe in 2022. If so, we'll be there.