 |
CUCO SANCHEZ 1921-2000 |
Guitarras, lloren guitarras!
His Anglo fans are weeping, too!
By
RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
If
anyone asks me to name the most romantic melody I ever heard,
I never hesitate. That would be "Anillo de Compromiso"
("Engagement Ring") by the great Cuco Sanchez. The
saddest song? Again, no hesitation: "La Cama de Piedra"
("Bed of Stone") by the same composer.
Yes, I do have offbeat tastes in lots of things, including music,
but if you think a fondness for the music of Cuco Sanchez really
demonstrates a passion for the obscure, then I'm sure it's only
because you're Anglo. Right now much of the Latino world is grieving
over the death of the 79-year-old composer, singer, actor and
musician, who died on Oct. 5 in Mexico City, where the national
Televisa network broke into regular programming to make the sad
announcement.
But it's true that not many Anglos ever heard of Cuco Sanchez, though I suspect millions have heard at least one of his 200 or so songs played by mariachi at their favorite Mexican restaurant.
For me, my appreciation of Cuco Sanchez was a gift from my Latino pals in college. One of them put on a Sanchez album one night and the first track I heard was "La Cama de Piedra." I'd never heard such a haunting refrain. Sanchez sang it with guitar, harp and drum accompaniment, his voice throbbing with such sadness that it lanced into you like a cold sword. I felt terrible anguish -- and the only word I really understood was "corazon," which means "heart." (As long as you know that word, you're almost home free with Sanchez.)
Felix, who was one of my roommates, told me what the song was about and I felt even worse: The singer was a revolutionary, condemned to death, and this was his last word on everything. He was going down with dignity, though, asking that he be buried in his serape instead of a coffin--with his cartridge belts arranged to form a cross. And, by the way, they could write these last words over his tomb--with a thousand bullets!
Hey, I was barely 21 or so, and this was very heady stuff. Overnight, Cuco Sanchez became my primary antidote to rock & roll. When the young Joan Baez came along, I liked to alternate their records, which seemed to keep me in the proper radical frame of mind for days on end.
Actually, Sanchez and Baez weren't from the same planet, as far as I could tell. Cuco wasn't the kind of revolutionary Joan was. In fact, he probably was a pretty unpolitical guy compared to her. But Cuco loved to sing songs about the great Mexican revolution of the past. If you want to dig out one of his great classic albums, I'd suggest you go after "La Cucaracha," his soundtrack album from the huge Mexican movie about the Mexican Revolution, starring Maria Felix, Pedro Armendariz, Dolores del Rio, Emilio Fernandez--and Cuco himself.
I snapped all his albums up, which turned quite a few heads at record stores in the late 1950s. You didn't see too many Anglo kids buying Mexican records back then, but I wasn't the only one. My Anglo roommate, Dan, also freaked on Cuco and made his share of purchases.
Though I'm partial to "La Cucaracha" and Cuco's first "Hits" album, which includes one of my favorites, "La Ultima Palabra," our little Anglo-Latino appreciation cell at San Jose State College (it wasn't yet a university) unanimously felt his all-time great album was "Guitarras a Media Noche" ("Guitars at Midnight"), which has all his classics, including "La Cama de Piedra," "Guitarrasm Lloren Guitarras" and "Anillo de Compromiso."
Though all of his music was special, I'm also aware that this was a special time in my life. I was a kid who grew up in an almost exclusively white communtiy, but longed to know and understand other cultures. I loved the tastes of exotic foods and drinks and I was mesmerized by how different another country's art, music and literature could be from mine. I had a particular affinity for Asian and Latino culture because they were prevalent in the 1950s for anybody growing up in California.
So, it happened that I gravitated to kids from different ethnic backgrounds even back in grade school. I begged them to talk about their lives, their culture, often, I'm sure, to their profound embarrassment. But I really became immersed in things Latino when I reached my upper division years at San Jose State. At least one of my roommates always happened to be Latino, so it seemed a natural thing and not some kind of social experiment for weird Anglo kids.
In the waning days of the 1950s, a typical evening would find me with Dan Bauer and Elias "Border Boy" Castillo, stuffed from a big Mexican meal at El Rebozo, probably more than a little fuzzy from too many Bohemias or Dos Equis, sprawled out on the carpet of our apartment, listening to Cuco Sanchez empty his heart out to softly strumming guitars. Sure, we had homework to do, but....
When so much happiness and nostalgia seems to be wrapped up in the music of a certain period, even the opening bars of an old favorite tune can bring tears to your eyes--and an ache in the heart for times gone by. That's why it's so hard for me to get out the old Cuco Sanchez albums today. And knowing the great master of the Mexican ranchera, the crying ballads and the songs of revolution has left us for good is going to make it even harder in years to come.
Adios, Cuco. My corazon is heavy tonight.
© 2000 by Ron Miller. Photo of Cuco Sanchez © Columbia Records.
| Home | About Us | Archives | Talkback | Shopping Mall |