KGOD Spanish Songbook

There are some languages that seem to be halfway to music before anybody sings a note. Spanish is one of them.

KGOD Spanish Songbook takes the KGOD songs out for another adventure, this time into the enormous musical world of Spanish-speaking cultures.

And enormous is the word. There isn’t really such a thing as Spanish music. There are hundreds of traditions, crossing oceans, mountains, cities, villages and centuries—from Spain to Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, Chile, Puerto Rico and points beyond.

So this isn’t an attempt at musical anthropology. It’s a KGOD songbook—the songs wandering through that landscape, trying on different clothes and discovering what happens to them.

A song that behaves one way in English can become quite a different animal when it encounters Spanish rhythms, Spanish phrasing and Spanish musical attitudes.

Sometimes it becomes romantic.

Sometimes tragic.

Sometimes wildly cheerful.

Sometimes it acquires a guitar and refuses to come home.

You’ll hear vague and distant echoes of flamenco, bolero, rumba, ranchera, tango, Latin ballad, dance music and the old café and street traditions, along with mostly things that don’t fit comfortably into any category at all — maybe funk?

That’s part of the fun.

The object isn’t to produce museum-perfect reproductions of traditional forms. The object is to let the songs loose and see what happens.

And something does happen.

Change the language, rhythm, instrumentation, vocal style or cultural setting of a familiar song and suddenly you’re hearing it again. Things that had disappeared through familiarity become visible. A phrase jumps out. An emotion changes. A joke lands differently. A line you thought you understood acquires another meaning.

That’s one of the continuing experiments behind the KGOD songbooks.

How many different songs are hiding inside one song?

Maybe quite a few.

And perhaps the same question applies to the listener.

Put on the KGOD Spanish Songbook, turn it up a little, and allow yourself to travel without luggage, passport or airport security.

The courtyard is open.

The guitars are tuned.

Somebody has started singing down the street.

And, as usual, KGOD is on the air.

Que la música te acompañe siempre.

KGOD — The Station That Makes It.

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Here’s the Bardo bus now.

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See You At The Top!!!

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