Wednesday, December 4, 2013

And We Danced

Celia Cruz con la Sonora Matancera
La Tierna, Conmovedera, Bamboleadora
Seeco, SCLP 9246, made in New York

Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving weekend. We sure did, good food, good weather, cozy atmosphere, and a spontaneous dance party. I picked this Celia Cruz record somewhat randomly from a stack of recently bought Latin records. I don't think I had ever played it before, but it sure turned out a good pick for dancing. We played the whole record, every track a danceable. We had no idea we were dancing to a son, a bomba, or a criolla, twerking, spinning, and swinging with lighthearted abandon. Despite my good intentions I never learned Spanish, and neither did any of us. So we danced to songs none of us understood the lyrics to. I'm sure they are as lighthearted as our moods were. Below you can listen to the first track on the album called Mi Bomba Sonó that, despite my lack of Spanish, I think I can translate as "the sound of my bomb" (or: the sound of my bomba, as it is a song style). The music is Cuban but I have no idea if Mi Bomba Sonó was recorded before or after the Missile Crisis of 1962. I assume after because the record was issued in the United States. The record titled La Tierna, Conmovedora, Bamboleadora is not listed on Wikipedia's extensive Celia Cruz discography. Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso de la Santísima Trinidad known simply as Celia Cruz, the Queen of salsa, was born in Cuba in 1925, and died in Cuba in 2003. Many of the in between years she spent in New York, become the best known and influential female figure in the history of Cuban music.