Pop music

You come to a country, lacking all aesthetic paraphernalia, all evidence of personal taste - books, pictures, houseplants, iPod playlist. As a cultural naif you have to swallow many things more or less whole, suspending judgment. If someone offers you cured meat, hashish, an invitation to a concert, a racist opinion – take, eat. Generally, you lack even the means to argue back. You don’t know the language well enough yet.

This goes for trash television & pop music as well. I expose myself to a higher dose of popular culture here than I ever would in the States; I don’t know any better. Take Latino 40, for example, the music video channel, which my roommate plays more or less constantly in the apartment. I asked the opinion of the art teacher at my school (who, for my Emerson audience, keeps asking me who’s playing when I plug WERS into the teacher’s lounge, & approves). He just snorted at & laughed.

And then he turned the car radio (we were driving into the city at the time) to “good” music. Not that, as he told me, Jaén is exactly a mecca for radio & art. But Radio 3? Better, he said. Better.

Nena Daconte’s new single, though – even he has to admit it’s catchy. It’s played on Radio 3 and Latino 40. That, kids, is what they call a crossover hit. And if it’s stuck in my head, well then, at the very least you’re going to know what I’m talking about.  See below: