I told my Spanish teacher, Rodolfo, that Fabio and I were going to a concert at a Madrid theater to hear two musical groups, Mocedades and Los Panchos. He laughed. ¿Mocedades? ¿Por qué? Mocedades was for old people. Older than us even. This concert was like going to see the Mamas and the Papas. Under normal circumstances, I’d pass. But I couldn’t wait to go.
When Fabio saw the advertisement for this performance he bought two tickets. I knew only one Mocedades song, “Eres Tu,” because Fabio had played it multiple times on Spotify and YouTube.
Los Panchos were another story. I had listened to this Mexican group famous for boleros and romantic ballads during a business trip to Mexico in the late 1990s with my colleague Carmela. I loved the music and thought my father would too. He had introduced me to Paul Robeson, Glenn Miller, Polynesian music, Vera Lynn, and Spanish classical guitar. Finally, I could reciprocate with something meaningful to both of us. Giving him a cassette of Los Panchos for his birthday, I scored big time.
Three guitar-playing Mexican musicians started Los Panchos in 1944 at the Hispanic Theater in New York. They achieved quick notoriety with their bolero and ranchero songs. The group has enjoyed fame as one of the greatest musical trios ever and one of the most influential ensembles of Latin America. They’ve achieved popularity globally. As younger musicians have replaced older ones, they continue to play. The group has given concerts for more than seventy years. They’ve been in over fifty films. The band has performed their version of classic Mexican songs such as Besame Mucho, Quizás Quizás, Quizás, (click to play) and Sin Ti. Jimmy Dorsey, Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, and Placido Domingo among others have performed Besame Mucho, “Kiss Me a Lot,” a song written by a Mexican composer in 1932. It remains one of the most popular tunes in Spanish of all time. According to the songwriter, when she wrote the song, she had never been kissed before and thought that kissing was a sin. You’d never know it by the passion of the lyrics.
Mocedades started in Bilbao, a city in the Basque Country in northern Spain, in 1967. One of its first hit songs was “Eres Tu.”(Click to play.) This song became popular outside of Spain and Europe and even made it to #9 of the top hits in the United States. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the group grew in popularity. If offered music for a wider audience when it included in its repertoire songs in English, Italian, German, French, and Euskera, the language of the Basque Country. In 1997, the group made its twenty-first album, this time with Walt Disney Records in which they sang tunes from Disney movies.
Unlike the Latin rock concerts Fabio and I have attended in Madrid in outdoor amphitheaters, parking lots, and Madrid’s equivalent of Madison Square Gardens, the Mocedades and Los Panchos event took place indoors in a smaller venue. We made our way to the tenth row to sit in movie theater style seats instead of hard plastic ones. In some concerts, we had stood the whole time. The lights were muted. There were no disco balls or streaks of purple and green lights.
Each band featured one singer of the earlier group. Izaskun Uranga Amézaga, now seventy-four years old, formed with her two sisters Mocedades. She’s the only living member of the original group.
Rafael Basurto Lara, now eighty three, who joined Los Panchos in 1976, is the last of the group’s first singers. He’s been at this since he was five years old when his mother gave him a guitar for his birthday. During the concert, he mentioned Mexico being a long way from Spain for anyone, especially someone of his age. His eyes crinkled when he smiled. He spoke about his love for music, Madrid, the audience, his band, instrument, and past and present musicians. Then he went on about love some more. He looked as excited as a kid hauling out presents from under the Christmas tree.
The lead singers encouraged the audience to sing along. Waves of voices on and off key, loud and soft filled the theater. Even I joined in, mouthing or singing the words when I could.
Lara invited the audience to sing “Madrid,” a song written by a Mexican composer, Agustín Lara (no relation). He also wrote songs dedicated to other cities in Spain, including Granada, Toledo, Murcia, Sevilla, and Valencia. Oddly enough, Lara hadn’t been to Spain when he wrote them. His renditions pleased the dictator General Franco so much that he gave Lara a house in Granada.
I only know the refrain, “Madrid, Madrid, Madrid.” I don’t need more. Fabio and I belt this out walking the streets of our city, in front of our building, and in the Parque Retiro. We sing it when we depart from a foreign airport going home. We run through it again when we touch down in Madrid.
The singers in the Mocedades/Los Panchos concert chatted, smiled, and sung with the audience. They hit the notes―the musical and the emotional ones. They stepped and swayed with the music. The crowd followed suit from their seats. I sang, clapped, and whistled even though this wasn’t the music I grew up with and I didn’t know more than a stanza of a handful of songs. The music connected us all to our past, our feelings, and each other. Even if I didn’t catch the words, I got the meaning.
Awesome heartfelt tribute to the one universal language! ❤️🎵❤️
Felt I was there in the theater.