Interviewer: I wanted to check in with Graciela Mochkofsky. Graciela writes for the New Yorker about politics and culture in Latino communities especially. She directs a program in bilingual journalism at the City University of New York. Graciela has lived here for years and she immigrated to the US from Argentina in 2013. She told me that just recently, she started to reconnect to the music that she'd grown up with during the pandemic when she was spending a lot more time with her family.
Graciela Mochkofsky: It's me, my husband, and my son, he's now 10. The first year of the pandemic in September, we heard that he was going to go back to school to in-person classes every other day. We decided to get a car, a little Honda Fit because we would go to the school that was a 30-minute drive. This actually led to the need for music and playlists.
Interviewer: Now, Graciela, you grew up in Argentina, is music something that brings back home in some way? Is there a nostalgic element to you?
Graciela Mochkofsky: I'm not nostalgic. I never really miss home. I miss my parents, I miss people, but I don't miss the country. I was actually so sick of the country when we left, it was so frustrating. What happened when my husband created the playlist is that he had a different relationship with the country. He grew up in exile. They were kicked out of the country during that last military dictatorship. To him, going back to Argentina was always important. I grew up in a very small town in Patagonia and in the provinces and I always wanted to escape.
One day we're driving and my husband plays this music by this great Argentine singer, Luis Alberto Spinetta. He was a huge figure, a legend in the history of Argentinian rock. We have a National Musician's Day and it's this guy's birthday. I hated his music. I couldn't stand his voice. He has this very mellow voice, very lyrical, and when I was growing up, I didn't connect with his music. We're driving and my husband plays a song by Spinetta and I'm like, "Oh, great." The playlist thing created some tension in the car.
Interviewer: As it always does, yes. What's the name of the song, Graciela?
Graciela Mochkofsky: The name of the song is Cantata de Puentes Amarillos.
Interviewer: How would you translate that?
Graciela Mochkofsky: A song of yellow bridges. It's a 9 minutes, 12 seconds song. I think it's the longest song in Argentinian rock. It was recorded in 1973. It's a song that connects very different surreal images that come from very different sources.
[Cantata de Puentes Amarillos playing in the background]
Guarda el hilo, nena, guarden bien tus manos esta libertad, ah
Ya no poses, nena, todo eso es en vano como no dormir
Graciela Mochkofsky: The song has this moment, which is where I actually converted to Alberto Spinetta on that ride. We stop at a red light and I hear him sing this wonderful line that I'll translate as, "Even if they force me, I will never say that the past was better, tomorrow is better."
[Cantata de Puentes Amarillos playing]
Aunque me fuercen yo nunca voy a decir
Que todo el tiempo por pasado fue mejor, mañana es mejor, ah
Graciela Mochkofsky: Then at the end, he just sings tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
[Alberto sings at the end of Cantata de Puentes Amarillos]
mañana, mañana, mañana.
Graciela Mochkofsky: This is September 2020. There was no vaccine yet. A song that really spoke to this moment, which was really unexpected because he didn't mean that, but that's what music does.
Interviewer: Who would be your second pick on the playlist?
Graciela Mochkofsky: As I mentioned, I'm from the provinces, and in the provinces, there's this folk music. It's called Zamba and it's Zamba with a Z, so it's not the Brazilian Samba. Zamba is a dancing music, where a couple dances with white handkerchiefs and they round each other. I hated this music because it was the music of the provinces and this oppression. Being a woman growing up in the provinces to me it was really difficult. That music represented my desire to just leave and never listen to that music again.
One of our major folk singers, she passed in 2009, Mercedes Sosa is her name, and she was this huge, huge singer. She was well-known. She sang [unintelligible 00:04:40]. She has a very characteristic voice, very deep, wonderful voice with a very thick accent from the north of the country. I just couldn't hear that. It made me cringe, but my husband loves her. Everybody loves her except for me. We are going to the [unintelligible 00:04:58] one weekend and he plays Mercedes Sosa, I'm like, "Great, fantastic." Then I start listening to this song it's called Zamba Para Olvidarte, which means Zamba, this music to forget you.
[Zamba Para Olvidarte playing]
No sé para qué volviste
Si yo empezaba a olvidar
No sé si ya lo sabrás
Lloré cuando vos te fuiste
Graciela Mochkofsky: It's about the end of her love, to forget the person she's loved, but it's very sad and her voice is so deep and she's like, there's nothing left of our love. "There's only this song, there's this song in my guitar." Then for the first time I'm moved by her voice.
[Zamba Para Olvidarte continues]
No sé para qué volviste
Qué mal me hace recordar
Graciela Mochkofsky: I just listen to this song now all the time and it's become one of my favorite songs. I think it's just beautiful.
[Zamba Para Olvidarte continues to play]
La tarde se ha puesto triste
Y yo prefiero callar
Para qué vamos a hablar
De cosas que ya no existen
No sé para que volviste
Interviewer: Finally, we're now getting pretty far south on the FDR Drive, close to your kid's school. I have to remember my own kids when they were really young and I was foisting music on them. It was a complicated battle. Sometimes they liked it. Little kids always seem to like the Beatles. Then the next thing you foist on them, that's the end and they want their own stuff. What is the final song you are putting in front of your son in the car? I wonder how he is reacting too.
Graciela Mochkofsky: He doesn't like any of this music, but this third song he really likes. This is the one we play the most. Those are too sad for him. The last one, it's called Loco (Tu forma de ser). Loco means crazy. Tu forma de ser means your way of being or the way you are. This is a song from the '90s and it's a song by Los Auténticos Decadentes, the authentic Decadentes, I guess, you'll translate the name. This is big band of guys who do scar and reggae, and combined with Latin American rhythms, like Cumbia, Candomblé, and rock.
Interviewer: What are they singing about, Graciela?
Graciela Mochkofsky: The wonderful thing about this song is I cannot translate it to you really because it's in the vernacular, a very lowbrow Buenos Aires vernacular. The first scene is this woman comes into the bar and she's with another guy. She trips and falls. For some reason, that's never explained, but then she throws-- If you translate it literally, she throws a penguin at him. A penguin or a penguin is actually something only an Argentinian of my generation or older will know.
The penguin is a ceramic jar in the shape of a penguin that was very traditional to serve the cheap Argentinian wine before we invented Argentinian Malbec. It was like the cheap wine you buy in a gallon plastic. Here it would be this jug wine.
Interviewer: Or wine in a box we now have.
Graciela Mochkofsky: Exactly, in a box. You mixed it with Seltzer because it was so bad. That's how my parents still drink wine. I just feel this sense of acceleration when I hear these words. The song is full of these words that are very specific to a moment of Argentinian vernacular. I do speak Spanish a lot in the city, but I speak Spanish now with Peruvians and Mexicans and Colombians, and Caribbeans. I speak Spanglish at home with my kid, but I don't speak Argentinian anymore. That's what this song is to me. It's just this joy of reconnecting with my language.
Interviewer: Let's hear it. Let's hear the authentic Decadentes playing Loco.
[Loco (Tu forma de ser) playing]
Te vi llegar del brazo de un amigo
Cuando entraste al bar y te caíste al piso
Me tiraste el pingüino, me tiraste el sifón
Estallaron los vidrios de mi corazón
Interviewer: Graciela, obviously for me, these three songs are new and a great pleasure to hear your memories of them. Thank you so much.
Graciela Mochkofsky: Thank you.
[Loco (Tu forma de ser) continues playing]
Te vi bailar, brillando con tu ausencia
Sin sentir piedad chocando con las mesas
Te burlaste de todos, te reíste de mí
Tus amigos escaparon de vos
Y a mí me volvió loco tu forma de ser
A mí me vuelve loco tu forma de ser
Tu egoísmo y tu soledad
Interviewer: You can find Graciela Mochkofsky's work for us @newyorker.com.
[Loco (Tu forma de ser) continues]
Son estrellas en la noche de la mediocridad
Me vuelve loco tu forma de ser
A mi me volvió loco tu forma de ser
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