THALÍA, “ENTRE EL MAR Y UNA ESTRELLA”

17th June, 2000

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To pick up on my analogy from two posts ago, where I said that these Hot Latin #1s are not the tip of the iceberg, but only the tiny portion of the tip exposed to the air (everything below water, in this analogy, never charted at all, but its vast bulk sustains the rest), Thalía's career to this point has taken place entirely within the iceberg, but mostly above the waterline. A pop star in Mexico since 1986, when she joined the juvenile pop group Timbiriche (which also incubated another figure we have yet to meet on this travelogue, but will), and a telenovela star since 1987, she released her first solo album in 1990 and had her first pan-Latin crossover smash in 1994 (with production and songwriting assistance from... Emilio Estefan). That she has not shown up here before is a product of chance, not her lack of starpower.

In fact by 2000 it would be possible for a devoted Latin Pop watcher to think of Thalía as being rather long in the tooth, especially with the sinuous, more forcefully artistic Shakira coming up from behind. (Wait for it...) The success of this song, indeed, bears all the hallmarks of a turn towards adult contemporary: shuffling rhythms and wordless chants lifted from the kind of South African pop that Anglophone stars have been using to sound classy ever since Graceland, twinkly percussion, a vaguely spiritual, nature-infused lyric (the title translates to "between the sea and a star"), and an unflustered performance from Thalía that calls to mind Gloria Estefan at her most comfortable. Since other songs on the album included a Gloria Estefan cover and a remake of the great 60s South African hit "Pata Pata," this feels right at home with other turn-of-the-millennium adult-contemporary hits like Sting's "Desert Rose."

But although "Entre el Mar y una Estrella" was the first single, in the context of the album Arrasando it functions more like a traditional second single, the ballad after the uptempo smash: the electronic "Regresa a Mí" or the punchy title track, which became singles later, would have fit in just fine with the Ricky Martins and Marc Anthonys who were the most exciting things in Latin Pop at the moment. But they didn't hit #1, and this did.

JUAN LUIS GUERRA Y 440, “EL COSTO DE LA VIDA”

20th February, 1993

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Now this is what I'm talking about!

Within the first few notes, "El Costo De La Vida" shimmered its way into my favorite of the songs I've listened to for this project. It's something we haven't heard before, something we haven't even come close to hearing before; even the few trópical tracks we've had before weren't this light-footed and funky, big muscular salsa or jacking dancehall instead of goosey, jiving merengue with bachata guitars and afro-pop percussion.

Or rather afro-pop guitars and bachata percussion. If it's not easy to draw a clear distinction between the dance music of the Dominican Republic and the dance music of Western Africa, there's a reason for that; not only is the music of the Caribbean more African than European or native (a mixed heritage to which Guerra refers when he sings "una raza encendida, negra, blanca y taína" — "a race on fire, black, white and Taíno"), but twentieth-century African pop has long drawn inspiration from the music of the Caribbean.

But then this isn't a song produced by anonymous, collective Caribbean, or even Dominicans — Juan Luis Guerra (both with and without his muso band 440) is one of the major figures of modern Latin Pop, and it's only the vagaries of US airplay that has kept us from considering him before now. Most of Latin America was introduced to him in 1989, when "Ojalá Que Llueva Café" ("if only it rained coffee") became the biggest Dominican hit to date, and introduced his hyperliterate, danceable fusion of merengue, bachata and highlife to an international audience which ate it up. If there's a comparable figure in Anglophone pop, it would be as if Billy Bragg had had George Michael's career — only he never went away. (Not to upset a certain bunny, but stay tuned for lots more Guerra over the years.)

"El Costo De La Vida" means "the cost of living," and as usual with the phrase there's an implicit "high" in there. Both an unrelentingly funky dance track, with the call-and-response and punctuating horns typical of tropical music, and a sharp-tongued analysis of the political and economic woes of the early 90s (although, he noted with despair, very little about it would need to be updated to reflect 2010), it was also, if Wikipedia can be trusted, a source of controversy, as certain [citation needed] listeners heard anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism in its litany of ills (accurately! see below) and certain [citation needed] countries actually banned it from airplay, afraid of pissing off the US. That it reached number one here anyway (if only for a week) is a testament to its innate danceability rather than to the radicalism of the Spanish-speaking population in America.

That radicalism: "Democracy cannot grow if corruption plays chess." "Unemployment also bit me/No one cares, because you see/We don't speak English/Or Mitsubishi/Or Chevrolet." "We are a perforation in between sky and sea/Five hundred years later a race on fire/Black, white and Taíno/But who discovered who?" All of it punctuated with chirrups and "ya ves" ("now you see") because, after all, this is a dance song. But it's also a political song, and a literary political song at that.

Not only is this now my favorite song I've heard so far in this project, the more I listen to it and study the lyrics and shimmy to its intoxicating rhythm, it's fast becoming one of my favorite songs ever. One of the key tracks of the 90s, of world music history, of pop music generally. This is me grabbing you by the lapels and shaking you: listen to this song.