Mirame, eli re eli

[ritaxis]

So when we drive to the City and back my son and I listen to a remarkable radio station -- 105.7 FM if you live in the Bay Area. One thing that's remarkable is that it can be received in Santa Cruz, the Peninsula, and the East Bay. I don't know another station about which I could say that. Another remarkable thing is that it's a Spanish-language station with no ranchera or banda music. There is good ranchera and banda music, just not enough of it to justify what is it? seven stations playing it twenty-four hours a day. It's "La Calle! Reggaeton y mas!!" which means it mostly plays Spanish Hip-Hop, along with the odd punkish piece, or technoish piece, or old-fashioned rock piece, or occasionally even something that sounds remotely like reggae. "Reggaeton" doesn't seem to mean "reggae-like."

So there are all this remarkable songs they play over and over -- "Palatero Man" is a good example, a straight-up rap narrating the life of a hot young paletero (ice cream cart man), with some clumsy double entendres and some very nice dialog in the tradition of Cheech Marin. But the most remarkable song is "Mirame" (look at me), which is a duet between a hiphoppity guy named Daddy Yankee and a Hindi singer named Deevani. It's like watching "Bride and Prejudice" in three minutes.

Here is a nice Desi take on the song from last summer at Sepia Mutiny.

Comments

Re: Mirame

[(Anonymous)]

Also, her name is *Deevani,* and we don't know if she's Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist or Jain.

Re: Mirame

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Both have been fixed, thanks. "Deevali" wasa simple typo, but Hindu for Hindi was, yes, a sloppy identifier of the singer, based on my experience of films with her singing style in them -- where the films were saturated with Hindu identity, so much so that if they didn't have the gloss of foreignness about them -- if they had been American films which were that smug about Christianity, for example -- they'd have been unwatchable.

Anyway, the song is magnificent, and whoever it is that you are, you should go listen to it.