“Frío”: A Song With Duende

By Angela Acosta ’17

9/14/16
Prompt: Pick an object or song from your childhood and explain how it relates to your research.

The song “Frío” (“Cold”) by Winsin y Yandel featuring Ricky Martin comes to mind when I think about the beginning of my interest in the Spanish language and Spanish literature. Long before I could speak even the simplest of Spanish words, I listened to Spanish music for children as a way to immerse myself in my culture at a young age. While the ability to speak Spanish should not define what it means to be Latin@, I decided to learn Spanish as a way to learn about my own heritage.

I started listening to “Frío” during second year Spanish class in high school. At the time, I was learning more complicated Spanish verb tenses and discovering new idiomatic expressions. I really liked listening to songs from Ricky Martin’s album “MAS”, but I didn’t understand the lyrics completely right away. The sound of the Spanish words and the emotion conveyed in Ricky Martin’s voice stood out to me long before I was able to understand the entire song. Certain Spanish songs have duende, meaning that they evoke heightened emotions, and I listened to them over and over again.

Even though my current research project is rooted in poetry, it reminds me of the process of becoming fluent in Spanish. I started taking formal classes in eighth grade and the first songs that I listened to stood out to me not for the words or meaning, but the emotions that a listener can hear even without understanding the song. Making a poem accessible, as I have been doing while translating Vicente Aleixandre’s poetry, evokes a similar process of discovery and appreciation before the poem’s meaning becomes clear enough for me to translate it.

My observations and enjoyment as a reader inspires me to write literary analysis about Aleixandre’s poems. I write about things that interest me in Aleixandre’s poetry and must make the transition between being a reader and being a researcher who does close reading of the text. “Frío” reminds me of the various stages of being a reader as well as the fluency level one must attain for a text to become accessible for the reader. Everyone is at different points in the language learning process and art, such as songs or poetry, has a different meaning for an intermediate speaker than it would for a fluent speaker.
Listen to the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJEUWP6_374