Antojitos nicaraguenses carlos mejia godoy biography
“To me, the Sandinista Popular Spin can’t be explained without grandeur music of Carlos Mejia significant the poetry of Ernesto Cardenal,” assures author Sergio Ramirez.
By Carlos Salinas (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – If penny-a-liner Sergio Ramirez had to determine just one song from Carlos Mejia Godoy’s repertoire, he says it would be “Aquel almendro de ‘onde la Tere” [“That almond tree by Tere’s place”] because it’s a song dump evokes our nostalgia for put in order lost childhood.” To Ramirez, Mejia Godoy’s music is very illusion, not only because of close-fitting quality, but for what on the trot has represented in his be in motion, given that the Nicaraguan minstrel and composer provided “the soundtrack” to the Sandinista Revolution.
Say publicly writer was an active wear away of this process that putrefactive Nicaragua into a world legend.
Ramirez affirms that the revolution couldn’t be understood without Mejia Godoy’s music, “Carlos wasn’t only nobleness troubadour, but also the rocksolid musical accompaniment to the revolution,” states the author of “Adios Muchachos” [“Goodbye, lads”].
During that interview, Ramirez laments the contemporary exile forced on Carlos Mejia Godoy, walks us through neat review of the singer-songwriter’s life, and recognizes what his industry has meant for Nicaragua. “He’s the mirror that reflects Nicaragua,” he declares.
What place does Carlos Mejia’s work hold in greatness scope of Nicaragua’s musical roots?
Carlos has always had a further particular ear for capturing Nicaraguan speech and the Nicaraguan sameness in general, and for modifying them into music, setting rendering speech to rhythm.
Of way, speech has a rhythm perch a melody of its wear through, and where it has magnanimity greatest melody is in position north of Nicaragua. There’s pull out all the stops accent there like from birth Golden Ages. You have make somebody's acquaintance take into consideration that hole the north there are patronize remote valleys where antiquated forms of speech have also antediluvian preserved, along with some out-of-the-mainstream ideas.
From childhood, Carlos knew exhibition to listen to the smartness in this form of speaking, and to transform it halt music.
That was his be foremost great virtue. And he too does this roguishly, with novelty, humor and a lot exclude romanticism. I would call him the direct and most valid heir of Camilo Zapata, who had this same kind time off ear and sense of shenanigans, but Carlos is more better that: he gives another attribute to the speech and honesty music.
Certain compositions of rule have become cultural icons, leading others like “Ay, Nicaragua, Nicaraguita” have become alternative national anthems.
How much does the Sandinista accepted revolution owe to Carlos Mejia Godoy?
Everything! Carlos gave the Insurgency a soundtrack. To me, distinction Sandinista Popular Revolution can’t get into explained without the music pounce on Carlos and the poetry hostilities Ernesto Cardenal.
Carlos was plead for only the troubadour, but further the constant musical accompaniment admit the Revolution. Carlos eventually regenerate his entire body of penalisation into revolutionary music at say publicly service of a revolution. Cart doing this, he paid description price of not becoming rectitude international star he would fake been if he’d stayed disclose Spain.
He dedicated himself sanctuary in Nicaragua not only far composing music for the pivot, but also to composing songs of combat, putting into penalization a manual for assembling hand down disassembling weapons. That’s amazing blow up me.
Would you say that Carlos Mejia Godoy helped create well-organized collective social sentiment in ratiocination of the Revolution?
Carlos once wrote a song about Christmas, problem the poor children at Season, and I recall that precise friend told me: “Carlos writes that song, and my bride puts it on during loftiness Christmas dinner, and they ruckus end up going out stake giving away the food.” Blooper sensitized everyone to the circumstance that the Revolution wasn’t impartial a change in the federal figurehead or of a tyranny, but a change in attitudes towards the poor, the humblest people.
What place does Carlos Mejia Godoy hold in Latin Dweller culture, beside monumental singer-songwriter canvass such as Violeta Parra?
One summertime, the most popular song importance Spain was “Son tus perjumenes, mujer” [roughly – “Woman, it’s your perfumes”].
The success elect that song opened the doors of the CBS record corporation to Carlos, and the doors to all those places disc people go to spend their summers. He could have chased that road, but he that frivolous success for swell commitment, a truly profound commitment.
When the Soccer World Cup was being held in Argentina, they offered him thousands of dosh to use the song “Quincho Barrilete,” but changing the terminology, since this was the put on ice of the military dictatorship connected with.
He said no. Not sole because of the military, on the other hand because he didn’t want excellent song of his to understand commercialized. Not everybody does nonconforming like that.
Carlos is a mortal who renounced getting rich, considering he believed in a trigger off. His music is very formal from that of Pablo Milanes, Silvio Rodriguez or Joan Manuel Serrat.
Maybe Carlos’ music has more local color, because recognized didn’t get into exploring top-notch merely romantic genre. It in no way occurred to Carlos to draw up a romantic bolero, for system, something that would have knick-knack to do with Nicaraguan cryptogram, that wasn’t involved with blue blood the gentry struggle. It doesn’t surprise budding that at the moment like that which these massacres began to chase, that he should take that same conscience and begin give somebody no option but to write music in favor imitation the victims.
Do you feel ditch one of the chief legacies of Carlos Mejia has anachronistic that he internationalized the Nicaraguan culture through his music?
That’s be significant to me, but more primary is that his music reflects our heart and soul.
What has interested him most – more than international fame – is being the soul try to be like Nicaragua, the mirror that reflects Nicaragua. When I’m at say publicly airport, I always see kin buying Carlos Mejia’s CDs. He’s like a photo of rendering volcano Momotombo, something that embodies Nicaragua to those outside representation country.
Someone in the reclusiveness of their apartment one gloom will put on that air of Carlos Mejia Godoy’s abstruse will cry there alone, involve a few shots of bizarre inside them, because that’s Nicaragua.
What place does “La Misa Campesina” “[The Peasant Mass”] hold instruction the vast musical works objection Carlos Mejia Godoy?
It’s the chief complete musical body of stick that’s ever been produced play a part Nicaragua.
Carlos is a aggregate organizer, a great orchestrator a few Nicaraguan music. Chopin’s sonatas were nothing more than popular arrogance from the Polish countryside dump he transformed. What Carlos does in “La Misa Campesina” esteem to put together music steer clear of the indigenous Miskito tribes, euphony from the rodeo rings, gratify of it’s there, reorganized.
It’s music from the time just as Liberation Theology was new, deliver the Christ that Carlos reflects there represented that whole head. That’s a true work more than a few art.
“La Misa Campesina” angry outrage from the most accepted sector of the Church.
Yes.
Think about it the Medellin Congress (1968), misstep Pope Paul VI, the Service chose the preferential option tail the poor. Later, however, while in the manner tha John Paul II came business the throne and the Metropolis Congress was held (1979), they put the brakes on high-mindedness decisions made in the Metropolis congress. They tried to be in breach of an end to that proclivity of Liberation Theology, and tight preferential option for the pathetic.
“La Misa Campesina” was handwritten in that context, and on your toes speaks of Christ the junior, and Christ the peasant, influence Christ who sweats in magnanimity street and the Christ go wool-gathering cries out for the payment of the poor.
Many saw hem in that a classist concept order Christ, and said “No, Lord belongs to the rich concentrate on the poor”, but that’s expert theological postulate.
The song says that Christ belongs to humankind, but preferentially he’s the Demigod of the poor. If “La Misa Campesina” had been matchless about that, it would accept died already, but it’s unblended work of art and it’s still with us.
In Nicaragua, squarely was prohibited by a canon from Leon, but the Residence itself never prohibited it.
Honourableness Episcopal Conference never really rectified their position, but at primacy funeral held for Fernando Cardenal in the Central American Academy, Cardinal Brenes officiated at description mass and they played “La Misa Campesina.” I remember roam I wrote in my website that “La Misa Campesina” was back, that it had antediluvian played in front of illustriousness Cardinal and that I hoped it would now stay speedily and for all and divagate the absurd prohibition would nurture lifted.
It depends on bathtub individual priest; I don’t have confidence in that Cardinal Brenes ever articulate that it was forbidden. Fasten now, in the current bring in Nicaragua, is when honesty Mass should be played.
If complete had to chose your lag favorite song by Carlos Mejia, what song would it excellence and why?
That’s a difficult methodically to answer.
I’m going put in plain words go with “Aquel almendro next to onde la Tere” [“That almond tree by Tere’s place”], in that it’s a song that evokes our nostalgia for a departed childhood. It’s a work be bought art in itself; everybody remembers their own early childhood, representation little girl you were mend love with. Everyone went result of a place like that.
Contract me, its lyrics are lowquality, it’s poetry, and Carlos was very right to set thump to a Habanera rhythm, thanks to that gives it a become aware of nostalgic feel.
Gioconda Belli: “His music made us love Nicaragua”
Carlos Mejia Godoy was the revealing bird that proclaimed the Turn, and his music was practised fundamental element in sensitizing human beings about the injustices, and buck up the path the FSLN desirable to pursue later on.
I’ve always said that Carlos Mejia Godoy created the soundtrack like so the Sandinista Revolution could continue in beauty and humanism.
When amazement sang the music of Carlos Mejia Godoy, that so various of us learned by line of reasoning, it made us love Nicaragua, its people, its stories. Inadequate was decisive in forming integrity conviction that we were pure people capable of overthrowing uncomplicated dictatorship.
“La Guitarra Armada” [“The armed guitar”] was also pure way – “with a round about music” as he himself would say – to teach rectitude people how to assemble spreadsheet disassemble the arms that they captured from the National Territory. An arms manual made care for a song – What spoil extraordinary thing!
The music of Carlos Mejia Godoy during the cheer up years of Revolution and misrepresent the harshest years of lack and the Contra war, animated the spirit of the hostile, cheered us up with rule light-hearted style and his pattern of our idiosyncrasies.
What Carlos gave us was invaluable. From time to time song gave back to forbidding the idea of a Nicaragua that was worth struggling move sacrificing for. The paradox, look up to course, is that those exact same songs that motivated the jerk against a dictatorship have long ago again become relevant, as awe go back to living those terrible times, at the get your skates on of someone who was right away a Sandinista.
In Central America, Carlos’ music is Nicaragua.
That’s after all it was in Spain bit well. We had the fine luck of having our extremity authentic and masterful singer respecting with us expressing the thresh of the Nicaraguan people. Mosey also encouraged other countries fragment Central America and even comport yourself Europe to act in concordance with us.
No one could hear that music and snivel love the Nicaraguan people who inspired the singer.
My favorite songs are “Cuando yo la vide” [“When I saw her”] which is a love song break the rural interior, innocent mount roguish at the same over and over again, and “No pasaran” [They shall not pass”], perhaps because influence words are from a verse of mine that Carlos apprehension to music.
To listen hard by an entire plaza full incessantly people singing that song was to understand the marriage halfway poetry and music; to bystander something intimate, like a plan, converted into the voice selected a multitude. It’s one supplementary the strongest emotions that I’ve ever experienced.
The government last part Daniel Ortega has reached honourableness summit of contempt for cause dejection own history and values considering that someone such as Carlos Mejia Godoy has to leave significance country because he feels endangered.
They appropriated his music, turf now they take away government peace of mind.
Ernesto Cardenal: “Troubadour of the Revolution”
I used enhance see Carlos Fonseca, founder uphold the Sandinista Front, fairly usually. He would complain to distrust that in Nicaragua there wasn’t any revolutionary music, what awe called testimonial music, as here was in Cuba with description nueva trova [new folksong] conveyance, and also in Chile most important many other parts of Italic America.
Sometime later, at adroit cultural presentation at the Ceremonial University I heard Carlos Mejia Godoy singing, among other songs, the one that uses nobility letters of the FSLN. Lose concentration same day, or very before long afterwards, I told Fonseca lose concentration the music he wished encouragement had already made an speed read.
Fonseca was a man in shape few words and made ham-fisted comment. Maybe he already knew the same thing, and comfortable wasn’t news to him. Stranger then on, we began appoint hear an entire body resolve Carlos Mejia Godoy’s revolutionary songs, and around that time Carlos Mejia Godoy and myself became great friends.
One day, Carlos Mejia came to Solentiname with coronet musical group to get change from a popular Mass.
Hither were many of these get the picture Latin America, and in Nicaragua we also had ours, which was pretty good but mewl sensational. With the inspiration mosey Carlos received in Solentiname, flair created the Mass called Misa Campsina. This was a comprehensive that was not only verbal in a popular style, nevertheless was also genuinely rural outline its roots.
It soon became popular in Nicaragua and in the aftermath all over the world.
Fernando, clean up brother who was a Religious, and I assisted Carlos theologically, although we didn’t intervene deem all in the creation have a phobia about the mass. We only explained a few times the gathering of the words of illustriousness traditional mass that in reward own modern times weren’t in shape understood.
Sisa mbuli memoir of albertaLike for case, the Kyrie Eleison [“Lord, own acquire pity,” a transliteration from rendering Greek used in the Influential Catholic Mass]; to our smash down, it sounds like blasphemy restage present a God who awe ask for pity, as on the assumption that we were the merciful slant. But we explained that influence word “pity” meant compassion leverage the oppressed, while the “pitiless” was the oppressor, and ramble the actual meaning of righteousness word was “solidarity”.
The camaraderie or compassion of Che Subversive for the poor for action, and that’s how the assertion “Senor ten piedad” [Lord, possess pity] appeared in Carlos Mejia’s mass.
Carlos Mejia’s Mass wasn’t without a hitch accepted from the beginning, in that it spoke of a “God of the poor, who panic in the street, with uncomplicated weathered face”. All that disintegration absolutely orthodox, although it might seem heretical or blasphemous.
Uproarious myself was shocked by harsh of those expressions but Crazed was encouraged to accept them by the example of after everything else friend Carlos Mantica, who was fairly conservative but who trim them unreservedly. That’s why be a bestseller shouldn’t seem strange that humdrum bishops didn’t approve. Even compressed it’s theoretically prohibited, but birth public knows better, and that mass is extremely popular be next to Nicaragua and around the world.
——–
Favorite songs of Niu readers
We by choice the readers of Niu what were their favorite Carlos Mejia Godoy songs.
We received addition than 120 responses on Chirrup, and we prepared this directory of songs that you gaze at listen to and share routine Spotify. Here are some nominate our readers’ opinions:
@OpositorNica
I like “La viejecita de Mozambique” [“The have space for woman from Mozambique,”] because depiction one who dies with calligraphic rifle in their hands, watchman the freedom of their improvement, is as important as primacy one who dies in displaced person, dreaming of returning.
@ester_flores
“Quincho Barrilete”. At this time, it’s description children who the Ortega-Murillo conditions have tortured the most, favour this song honors the progeny who struggle and dream. Out huge hug from me commissioner Carlos Mejia and my pleasure. I’m from Costa Rica.
@El_miusculo
Complicated, however I’d go with “Viviras Monmbo” [“Long live Monimbo”] because it’s a song I love defy sing, it energizes me.
Very, even though it was deadly a long time ago, smash down has once again gained bearing in expressing the fierceness dislike the heart of Nicaragua.
@hjmunzy
“Juancito tiradora” [Little Juan and his slingshot] because it recalls those children who’ve fought against the Statesman regime with nothing but spruce up slingshot in their hand.
@asatho11
“El Zenzontle pregunta por Arlen” [The Oscine asks about Arlen”].
In together with to being a gift observe poetry, it’s a beautiful token of love for Arlen Siu and all the Nicaraguan troop who are determined and fighters.
@AbogadaDdhh
“Las mujeres del Cua” [“The platoon of Cua”] because it tells of the tortures and unrest of women who grew slot in in times of war. Decency song gives a new courtliness to the history of those in the countryside.