La flaca — Jarabe de Palo (1996)

Why this song

This song became famous through a cigarette advert. Ducados, on Spanish television, in the late nineties.

Today that would be illegal: tobacco cannot be advertised on television. It is worth stopping there for a second, because it explains something that no longer works that way. Before playlists, a song reached a lot of people when somebody put it in an advert, a series or a film. That was the road, and it was narrow.

Historical context

In the summer of 1995 Pau Donés went to Cuba with friends, among them the director Fernando de France, to shoot the video for a different song, El lado oscuro.

One night, at La Tasca — a club on the Malecón in Havana — he met Alsoris Guzmán, a Cuban model who worked there every night. The budget was tight and they ended up sharing a room. She has told it plainly: a kiss on the bus, and that was all.

Donés wrote the song as a poem and left it in an envelope before leaving for the airport. As he told it: when he turned round, she was reading the note and crying her eyes out.

The song was recorded in March 1996, between Barcelona and London, produced by Joe Dworniak, and released that year on Virgin. More than a year passed before it reached number one on Los 40 Principales, on 6 September 1997. It went on to pass 600,000 copies in Spain and to enter the Latin charts in the United States.

Musical characteristics

First things first: it is in A minor. Every chord chart agrees, the attached one included, so you can take it as settled even though no official score exists: it is what people play, not what anyone signed. The turn that repeats is often written A minor, E, D, C.

The interesting part for your ear is how that turn begins. The introduction runs A minor, E, D and then two chords with the bass note changed: F with A in the bass, E with G sharp in the bass. That is not a quirk of the chart. What it does is send the lowest note down one step at a time while the chords change above it. That moving low line is called a descending bass, and it is what makes the song feel like it is letting itself fall before it starts.

Where the charts disagree is on the chords themselves. The attached one writes the verses with A minor, E7 and G, and the chorus with F, G, A minor and D; others use the A minor, E, D, C turn. Both revolve around A minor, but they are not the same reading of what you hear. Play one or the other all the way through; what does not work is mixing them halfway.

Underneath there is also a decision about style. The band had come back from Cuba and the album was recorded between Barcelona and London: that mixture is what the whole record is about, not a detail of this song.

Hard facts: 4/4 and 103 BPM, from the Songsterr tab, in A minor. The only thing still missing is an official score, and there is none.

One thing is still missing, and it can only be said with the record playing: exactly what the percussion is doing.

Trivia and curiosities

• It took more than a year to reach number one. Released in 1996, top of the chart in September 1997. It takes apart the idea that a song either lands in its first week or is dead.

• The woman in the song exists, has a name — Alsoris Guzmán — and has told her version: far less novelistic than the lyrics. A good place to talk about the distance between what happened and what a song says happened.

• The push came from a tobacco advert, something that could not be broadcast today. The same song can be exactly as good and reach you or not, depending on which door is opened for it.

Guided listening

Five things to listen for, in the order they arrive:

• The introduction. Listen only to the lowest sound: it steps downwards while the chords change above it.
• The voice coming in. The chord turn is the one you have just heard.
• The chorus. Count how many different chords there are: the same ones.
• The moment the instrumentation changes. Write down what comes in and what goes quiet.
• The ending. Does it stop, or does it fade?

Classroom activities

• Play: the four-chord turn. If barre chords get in the way, a capo on the third fret gives you easier shapes.

• Sing: the lyrics are short and repeat. A good place to work on Spanish diction and on placing syllables against the beat.

• Analyse: a closed question. Listen only to the lowest sound in the introduction and say whether it rises or falls. Say at which moment you noticed.

• Create: take one chord and write four bars moving only the bass, without changing the chord above. Same procedure as the intro.

Key vocabulary

• Descending bass — bajo descendente
• Chord chart — cifrado
• Capo / barre — cejilla
• Minor key — tonalidad menor
• Cover / version — versión

Resources

In Year 3 — this song is also used in the units ¿Quién pagaba por oír una historia cantada?, ¿Cuándo empieza una melodía a decir de dónde eres?, from the theory and history book.

Official video

Guitar tutorial — ChordHouse, the reference one in Spanish for this song.

Piano tutorial — Piano click 2, easy version.

Bass tutorial — Joel Zelaz, with the tab on screen.

Drums — Hectors Drums Studio. Not a lesson: the drum part played through, which works better for copying the groove.

• Tab — attached below; the button opens it in Songsterr
• Cover image — El Malecón de La Habana de noche. Foto: Horacio Fernández, CC BY 3.0, vía Wikimedia Commons