Sin documentos — Los Rodríguez (1993)

Why it's in this book

This song sits in October for a reason: it shares its loop with La Bamba, Twist and Shout and Johnny B. Goode. Three chords in the same positions: the first, the fourth and the fifth. The difference is that here the loop is in minor, and that changes the colour of everything. Family A sounds like a party; this one sounds like a party with a shadow over it.

It sounds like a party, so it is easy to assume it is in a major key. Listen carefully: the record is in G minor. In class we move it up a whole tone to A minor, which is the key of the ukuleles and xylophones: Am, Dm and E7, plus an F in the intro.

In the room with no instruments, we sing the chorus with a second voice a third above and keep the beat with body percussion. In the ukulele room, we play the Am–E7–Dm–E7 loop with a strum that has some rumba in it. In the music room, the whole band: drums and bass hold it down, and the guitarist gets a real solo over the loop.

Why this song

In Spain this is the song that gets played at the end of weddings and village fiestas, when everyone is already dancing. Most people who sing along could not tell you who the band is.

The question on this page is a different one: how does a song its own band nearly threw away become an anthem?

Historical context

In September 1990, Andrés Calamaro arrived in Madrid from Buenos Aires with a keyboard and about nine hundred dollars. In Argentina he had written songs for Los Abuelos de la Nada, but his solo records did not sell. In Madrid an Argentinian friend was waiting for him: guitarist Ariel Rot, who had already been successful in Spain with the band Tequila.

With two Spaniards, Julián Infante on guitar and Germán Vilella on drums, they formed Los Rodríguez. The name is a joke. In Spain, "estar de Rodríguez" means staying home alone while your partner is away. Calamaro had left his girlfriend behind in Argentina.

Foto: livepict.com, CC BY-SA 3.0, vía Wikimedia Commons

This is Ariel Rot in 2007, playing a Telecaster. He is the band's lead guitarist and co-wrote "Sin documentos".

Their first album went nowhere: the label went bust a few days after it came out. All four were around thirty and short of money. In spring 1993 they recorded the second album in a Madrid studio in exactly one month. Record labels had turned down the demo again and again.

This time it worked. "Sin documentos" was the first song from the album to be played on every radio station, and the band became one of the big names in Spanish-language rock.

Musical characteristics

A chord that pulls you home. Listen to the chorus and focus on the chord just before it goes back to the start. It sounds tense, like a question waiting for an answer. That is the chord on the fifth degree, the dominant. In G minor it is D major, and it contains a note that is not in the ordinary minor scale: F sharp. That note is a semitone below G, which is why it pulls so hard towards home. When a minor scale raises that note, it is called the harmonic minor scale. It is also the sound we tend to link with flamenco.

Same three degrees, different colour. The verse goes round four chords: Gm, D7, Cm, D7. Count the degrees and you get the first, the fifth and the fourth: the same positions as La Bamba, but in a minor key. That is why it sounds like part of the same family and, at the same time, more serious.

Rock with a rumba feel. The beat is around 96 per minute, but the rhythm guitar strums much faster, with accents that come from rumba. Los Rodríguez mixed Rolling Stones-style rock with the rumba and flamenco they heard in Madrid. Here you get both at once: rock drums underneath, a rumba strum on top.

The arrangement that was not supposed to be there. Years later the drummer explained that nobody in the band thought this song was a hit. Germán Vilella added an arrangement to make it "ugly" so it would get dropped. That arrangement opens the song, and it is the first thing anyone recognises. An arrangement is everything decided about a song beyond its melody and chords: who plays what, when and how.

The solo. Towards the end, Ariel Rot plays an electric guitar solo over the same loop. No new chords: what is new is the melody he invents on top.

Hard facts: G minor on the record and A minor in class, 4/4, probably 96 beats per minute, 4:47. Verse Gm–D7–Cm–D7, bridge Cm–D, chorus Gm–D–Cm–D.

Guided listening

Play the music video. In the intro, before the voice comes in, listen to the arrangement that opens the song. It is the one Vilella added to spoil it. Decide for yourself whether he succeeded.

When the first verse starts, tap the beat with your foot. Now listen to the rhythm guitar: it strums several times for every tap of your foot. That is the rumba.

When the bridge arrives, the chords keep swinging between just two, Cm and D. The song hangs in the air, as if taking a run-up. Listen to how the chorus releases that tension.

In the chorus, listen to the last chord of each round, the D. Sing an F sharp over it and feel how it wants to rise a semitone to G.

When the guitar solo starts, count the bars. Listen for whether Rot repeats an idea or whether every phrase is new.

Trivia and curiosities

• The song the band nearly dropped is now its best-known. What it shows: an arrangement can matter more than the melody when it comes to a song sticking in people's heads.

• Several record companies rejected the demo before a small one, Gasa, took it. In its first three months in Argentina the album sold around seventy thousand copies.

• The band's name is a pun only Spaniards get. For two Argentinians who had just arrived, it was also a way of saying where they now lived.

• The song is in the 1995 Argentinian film Caballos salvajes. It is one of the few Spanish-language rock songs that is equally well known on both sides of the Atlantic.

Classroom activities

• Sing in two parts. In the room with no instruments, half the class sings the chorus melody and the other half a third above. Clap the beat on 2 and 4.

• Play the loop in A minor. On ukulele: Am, E7, Dm, E7, one chord per bar. First downstrokes only, one per beat. Then two quick strums per beat, accenting the first, to get the rumba feel.

• Compare families. Play La Bamba (C–F–G) and then this loop (Am–Dm–E7). How are they alike? What changes? Answer in two words: "same degrees", plus the colour you would give each one.

• Band and solo. In the music room, the drums play a rock beat at 96, the bass plays the root of each chord and the keyboard plays the loop. The guitarist improvises eight bars on top using the A minor scale; on the last chord, try a G sharp.

• Analyse the arrangement. Listen to the intro and list which instruments you hear. Then make up your own four-bar intro that "uglifies" the song. Can you come up with something people will remember?

Key vocabulary

• Dominant — dominante: el acorde del quinto grado
• Harmonic minor scale — escala menor armónica
• Minor key — tonalidad menor
• Arrangement — arreglo
• Solo — solo

Resources

Official music video — From the Warner Music Spain channel.

Guitar tutorial — Guitarraviva. Chords and rhythm, step by step, in Spanish.

The guitar solo — DuoMusic Academy. Just the solo, with the tab on screen. This is the band guitarist's goal.

Ukulele tutorial — Fabián Chacón. An easy version in A minor, the key we play it in class.

Piano tutorial — Alexacho Music. Explains the chords and the G harmonic minor scale, in the key of the record.

Drums — Abraham Maturana, a school music teacher in Chile. A drum lesson made for his class repertoire.

Bass — Mauro Bass Colombia. A cover with the bass tab on screen.