(SOUNDBITE OF LINDA RONSTADT SONG, "LA CALANDRIA")
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Last week, we introduced you to a new series from our friends at the Alt.Latino radio show and podcast. We're calling it Songs That Move You.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LA CALANDRIA")
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Vocalizing).
MARTIN: These are stories from listeners about a song that reminds them of a nostalgic time in their lives.
XOCHITL JAIME-AGUIRRE: My name is Xochitl Jaime-Aguirre (ph), And the song that moves me is "La Calandria" by Linda Ronstadt.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LA CALANDRIA")
LINDA RONSTADT: (Singing) Yo soy como la calandria, que para formar su nido siempre busca rama fuerte para no verlo caÃdo.
MARTIN: Here's Alt.Latino's Anamaria Sayre and Felix Contreras.
ANAMARIA SAYRE, BYLINE: OK, Felix, I am really excited for this one. But before you tell us Xochitl Jaime-Aguirre's story, I think everyone has to know a little bit about this album. "Canciones De Mi Padre" was huge. It remains one of the biggest-selling Spanish-language albums in the United States. It won a Grammy award after it was released in 1987, and I feel like everyone I talk to is obsessed with this record.
FELIX CONTRERAS, BYLINE: And on one quiet August morning in Ciudad Obregon in Sonora, Mexico, one song in particular from this album made an old man cry.
JAIME-AGUIRRE: This song evokes a very clear memory for me of being in the living room of mi abuelita and mi abuelito's house. And Linda Ronstadt was the constant in our house, especially that album, "Canciones De Mi Padre." But that specific song, "La Calandria" - there is a line that says, ¿mi prieta linda qué voy a hacer si tú me quitas este querer? And that line itself is the memory that I have tied to looking up and seeing mi abuelito, Chema (ph), just lifting up his glasses and getting the tears from, like, the bridge of his eyes and wicking them away and me not fully understanding until later why it was that that was making him so emotional.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LA CALANDRIA")
RONSTADT: (Singing) ¿Mi prieta linda qué voy a hacer si tú me quitas este querer?
SAYRE: Oh, I love that line - my beautiful prieta, what am I going to do if you take this love away from me?
CONTRERAS: And, you know, Ana, she didn't know at the time that her family was leaving Mexico for good. Her abuelito, or Don Chema, was facing the very real emotional reality that his oldest son was about to move his family - Xochitl, her brother and her mom - all the way to the U.S. And you know, Xochitl was the first grandchild, so she had a very, very special bond with Don Chema.
JAIME-AGUIRRE: I have memories from just sitting on the porch, those blue enamel cups that people take camping - like, I remember drinking coffee from those with him. Like, he'd let me have sips, listening to the news before the city really got moving, going for walks, the cheese that he would make, biking around town, fixing things for people. So many of my memories in my childhood are tied to him because we were incredibly close.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LA CALANDRIA")
RONSTADT: (Singing) Ay, ay, ay, ay. Las nubes van por el cielo. Los pescados por el agua.
SAYRE: There was something really significant for Latino families at this time who didn't have a lot of pop artists to latch onto or to see themselves in. I think everyone kind of tried to find that connection with Linda.
JAIME-AGUIRRE: I didn't know Linda Ronstadt as, like, the '70s, you know, The Stone Poneys and the trio. Like, all of that - I came to that later in my life. I grew up with "Canciones De Mi Padre." That was the Linda Ronstadt that I knew.
CONTRERAS: Linda Ronstadt's grandparents were part of that northern migration from Sonora because even as she made a name for herself in the 1970s folk rock scene in Southern California, very few people - and myself included - knew that Mexican music was part of her story. So with the release of "Canciones De Mi Padre", her Mexican heritage came into full view for all of us to appreciate.
JAIME-AGUIRRE: For my family, for people in Sonora, that was such a sense of pride.
SAYRE: The pride is so important here, Felix, because Linda was obviously taking a risk. I mean, I remember when we talked to her in our interview, I was so not surprised to hear that even with her star power at the time, she was told that making a mariachi album was going to be career suicide.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
RONSTADT: I did the record because I love the song so much, and I thought they were better than the songs that I was getting from publishers for American pop stuff. I just liked it better, and it suited my voice better, too, 'cause I'd sung it since I was a little kid.
CONTRERAS: For many of us, when she did dig in her heels, it felt like she was standing up for all of us.
JAIME-AGUIRRE: That, to me, is where I'm so thankful for her and the pride that she had, honestly, at a time where there was a lot more of our culture having to assimilate. So when at that time she decides to go for this record that, like, maybe didn't necessarily make sense in, you know, the trajectory of her career, she was like, no, this is what I need to do, and she dug in her heels. She dug into her roots. She brought together, you know, all these mariachis and literally changed the culture, the sound of mariachi, what people knew of her, what people thought about her. It was absolutely a game-changer.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LA CALANDRIA")
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Vocalizing, laughter).
CONTRERAS: You know, in 2013, she announced that she was battling a form of Parkinson's disease that put an end to her singing career. And, you know, for Xochitl, that is another deep bond between the singer and her family.
JAIME-AGUIRRE: Mi abuelito, when he passed, it was from Parkinson's. And I think about - even that tie, to me, Linda Ronstadt and mi abuelito, Chema, are one and the same.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LA CALANDRIA")
RONSTADT: (Singing) De qué les sirve a los hombres presumir de valentones si cuando.
SAYRE: There's this beautiful humanizing, Felix, I think, that happens when we get so intimate with an artist and their struggles and their pain and their sadness. And the fact that Xochitl was able to take this to what I would imagine would be one of the most emotional moments in her life - leaving her grandpa like this as she's crossing the border into the unknown - and to have someone like Linda be the representative and the voice for that. I mean, there's nothing really like it.
CONTRERAS: It's one of the joys of listening to music in any genre, in any tradition - when an artist becomes almost like a family member because the music has such significance, just like it does for Xochitl Jaime-Aguirre in her story this week.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LA CALANDRIA")
RONSTADT: (Singing) ¿Mi prieta linda qué voy a hacer si tú me quitas este querer?
MARTIN: Felix Contreras and Anamaria Sayre host Alt.Latino. That's a weekly look at Latin music and culture, and they want to hear about a song that moved you. Write to them at alt.latino@npr.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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