Viewpoints Staffer Daniel García-Pozo holds “Romance,” a studio album by singer Luis Miguel, while sitting in his father’s car on Feb. 23. The album includes boleros, a traditional genre for Spanish music. Photo courtesy of Jorge García-Granados
Although it is a genre unfamiliar to most American audiences, the Latin American bolero has become one of my favorite kinds of music to listen to.
A bolero is a traditional genre of Spanish song, typically performed at a slow tempo and written about love. It originated in Cuba, and quickly spread throughout Latin America during the 20th century. The genre gained modern popularity when Luis Miguel, a famous Latino artist, released an album in 1991 called “Romance” in which he covered classic boleros.
My family immigrated from Latin America to Athens in 2007. They brought very little with them from their homeland, but they made sure to bring a copy of Romance.
On the innumerable car rides across Athens, my parents would play that CD on the radio. They sang along, note for note, word for word. They would fill the car with passionate declarations of love, wistful yearnings of the heart and everything in-between.
This video contains the music from Romance by Luis Miguel, which Viewpoints Staffer Daniel García-Pozo insists his parents bothered him with in his youth.
I thought they were incredibly cheesy… at first. I did not understand what the music meant to my parents; I assumed they were just being mushy lovebirds. To them, however, the bolero was much more than just a way to give me second-hand embarrassment.
The boleros were a part of their past; both of them had grown up with these songs.
“They were not just declaring their love for each other, but love for the music itself and love for the cultural memories it brought.”
The music represented the persistence of my parents’ identity as people from Latin America, even when they were miles away from the place they used to call home. They were not just declaring their love for each other, but love for the music itself and love for the cultural memories it brought.
I have grown up far away from my home in Latin America, and I sometimes feel disconnected from my own identity. Thanks to my parents, however, a gentle bolero will always remind me that music can carry my heritage far beyond any borders.
