and Words
Para bailar la bamba
Para bailar la bamba se necesita una poca de gracia
Una poca de gracia y otra cosita
Arriba y arriba
Ay, arriba y arriba, y arriba iré
Así se canta La Bamba
Así se canta La Bamba
En East LA, en East LA, en East LA
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
A few months ago, we replaced our 24-year-old daily driver. Truthfully, trading that car saddened me. It served us faithfully, but small things started to fail. We may endure the idiosyncrasies or pay to get them addressed. Each such issue became a debate and a compromise. We leaped and got a new daily driver. The new wheels were similar, but different. New features included a backup camera, side mirrors with blind spot detection, heated seats, and an entertainment system with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.
With the integration of this new technology, I created an online playlist for music to play in our new car. First, I seeded that playlist with a modest set of songs that I thought we’d both enjoy. Next, I opened that playlist so that she may also add songs. Finally, we’d just play songs from that online as we zipped around town. After years of tolerating the radio or looking at the labels on the cassette tapes in the car, this felt transformative. That’s right, I said cassette tapes.
I discovered Avicii precisely this way. As we drove around town during the moderately chilly northwest, we figuratively danced in the car. We turned up the volume in the car to a hearing-damaging range and threw our hands up in the air as if we were at a rave. The surrounding vehicles must’ve thought we were crazy or drunk.
Ritchie Valens released ‘La Bamba’ in 1958, though that was just a popularized version. In other words, this song predates me by many years. I remember remnants of it during my early days in Puerto Rico. I spent those steamy island days set to that familiar tune that permeated my childhood. I lived those experiences together. They’re forever inextricable.
I felt the sun that baked my skin as I rode in the back seat of my father’s Chevy Nova; my face anchored to that window. I smelled the salt of the ocean as we drove along the beach. As we stopped at the vendors on the beach who roasted chickens over an open fire, the familiar scent of that food screamed ‘home’. In a quiet moment, you’ll also hear the soft rustling of the palm trees moving with the wind. The waves crashed rhythmically on the shores of the beach; the white foam and that unmistakably violent echo of that water crashing upon the sand.
Those waves beckoned me to dip my toes in. I wandered to the waters, my Chinese plastic flip-flops on my feet as the salty water immersed me to my ankles. I watched the waves leave and return like a perpetual motion machine. I didn’t understand what drove this rhythmic movement as a child, nor can I completely explain this motion even as an adult.
I remember the sand sticking to my wet feet, with the persistence of a cellophane wrapper on your fingers. That sand irritated me as a child; it went everywhere. We had the patience of children, so we only managed to remove minute amounts of that sand. The remnants between our toes or elsewhere would inevitably fall off in my father’s car.
Years later, this song resurges upon the release of Valen’s biopic. I studied engineering in Miami at the time, but this new version by Los Lobos supplanted the Valens tune in my head.
Once I moved away from Florida, the sand became a symbol of warm and sunny beaches. More than once, I returned to those beaches to collect that sand to bring back to my new home in Washington. Only today do I reflect upon the irony of longing for that very same sand that irritated me as a child.
Today, we drive down the road in our new car. The images project onto the screen on the dash; they’re mostly the UI for the maps and the music application. The sound and music are emitted from speakers that surround us; we can barely notice them from our seats. This all magically transmitted from the phone in my pocket. The digital bits flow as zeros and ones pieced together into images and music.
As we listen to the end of “Without You” by Avicii, we transition to another randomly selected song from our playlist. In this particular case, the familiar guitar riff starts. We both recognize this song immediately; this particular rendition, performed by Los Lobos released with the Ritchie Valens biofilm by the same name. Honestly, I’m not sure why this song is on our playlist; she had never played it on any occasion before.
The song immediately takes me back to the countless times when I had heard it before. Seconds after the guitar riff starts, the singing begins with, “Para bailar la bamba”. Subsequently, I naturally sing along with those words in Spanish that are only second nature to me. Her head turns abruptly in amused shock. Initially, she simply smiles, but then breaks out in laughter.
While she understands that I can speak Spanish, she didn’t realize that this song was a part of my childhood and upbringing. You might even say my culture. To shout the words to the music is its sort of celebration. As the song continues, she is now in stitches. She listens to me, her partner of over twenty-five years, sing a song in a foreign language with distressing familiarity.
Though, of course, it’s not foreign to me. Neither the language nor the song. It’s a reminder of a simpler time and hot summer days. Yes, and even those troublesome grains of sand that stuck to my wet feet. In mere moments, we establish a new tradition. This song remains on that playlist, and whenever it plays in the car, I’ll sing along.