Hi friends! Just a quick update to let you know that you can now download “Yo No Puedo Hablar Español” from www.bringonthetambourines.com. So if you didn’t get the first download, “Working Title,” sorry, too late, you’ll have to wait for the full release of the EP.
Some fun “behind the music” background info on Yo No Puedo … last fall, we had a Spanish instructor come to our work once a week, in an attempt to help make us more effective in communicating with our Spanish-speaking coworkers. Well, I’ll just say it. As much as I LOVE Mexico, Mexican food, anything Mexican, really … I have a mental block against Spanish. In fact, I just remembered that last night I had that dream, AGAIN, where it’s time for my final exam in college, yet I haven’t gone to class all semester, so I can’t find the classroom or remember what time the class meets. I have this dream once every six months or so. And the class is always, always SPANISH. Every dang time.
I took two years of Spanish in highschool. And I hated it. I think it was all just a mental block from the very beginning. I remembered my mom telling me I’d do well in Spanish because I was doing so well in my English classes. She said the two languages were more similar than, say, English and French. So I must have thought it would be really easy. Immediately I could tell that it wasn’t going to be. And that it was going to involve a lot of practicing over and over, and memorization. Which I never enjoy. So I quickly decided “this is too hard,” and pretty much gave up, before even giving it much of a chance.
I can’t say my recent experience with Spanish was much different. I still seemed to have that same mental block. I did learn the basics though. And one weekend, I sat with my guitar, determined to write a Spanish song. I struggled with it for a while. Thought about writing out English lyrics and then translating them. Finally I realized that the particular tune I was playing around with really didn’t need very many lyrics. And that the most appropriate thing for me to sing in Spanish really was “Yo no puedo hablar español, muy bien.”
Enjoy.
