✪ mimi's listening diary index

Asalto Navideño by Willie Colón, Héctor Lavoe, and
Yomo Toro: 3 January⁂

something that’s become rly apparent to me throughout the past couple of months is that i’m quite frankly rly ignorant on a lot of things that i should know more about. most of the time, it’s not intentional, since i just have a habit of sticking to the same things and having a hard time with keeping up with other things that i don’t really have an interest in or just thing i guess you can say i take for granted or i don’t notice much in my daily life, but i’ve been wanting to work on that since even though ignorance is bliss, as the phrase goes… i don’t wanna be ignorant!! one thing i’ve admittedly been rly ignorant about is my heritage… my family is puerto rican, but i was born and raised for my entire life in louisville, and because of that i’ve just been more adjusted to the american setting and a lot less knowledgeable about my family’s culture and what it’s like to just be puerto rican and stuff. sure, we eat puerto rican food at home, i always make sure to talk in spanish at home ( both for ease of communication and for practice so i maintain my fluency xP ), and a few other things, but i definitely could be better with knowing other things about what it’s like to be puerto rican.

for starters, my mom has asked me rly basic things about puerto rico sometimes, like who their president is, who some famous celebrities who are from there / are puerto rican as well are, and other trivia stuff that a native / person who descended from a native / anyone like the first two who’s not dumb lik me should easily be able to answer… most of the time, i remember struggling to even come up with an answer to the question; the first time my mom asked me if i knew who the president and the first lady of puerto rico were, i think i just told her i had no idea and she made fun of me a bit for it U>_<U ( the way my mom makes fun of me is okay thoo it’s in a friendly way and i don’t blame her for doing so xP ). she knew i had an interest in learning stuff about other countries and just general geography but she found it funny that i didn’t know anything about the place where she came from and in hindsight that definitely is very silly of me!! tbh i didn’t really look into these other countries either, but the fact that i just didn’t bother to look into puerto rico at all was not cool… sure, everyone has gaps in their knowledge about their favorite places or their native places and stuff like that (i don’t rly know much about louisville either honestly, but i’ve been wanting to for a little while as well!!), but it’s different for me since i just didn’t know anything! :>

so, in my quest to slowly start getting better with learning more about lots of different things and being less ignorant, i decided to do something that goes with the holiday season!! now, i know that this entry will probably be published at least a week after christmas ends, and i’m not even sure if people are feeling festive anymore, but i don’t care since i knew this was gonna be late anyway…

a couple of weeks ago, my mom told me about jibara while we were in the car going somewhere. my mom and i always just talk randomly in the car, mostly cuz she just says stuff to me or asks me something, and i respond and we go from there. but i was interested about jibara, since you know how much i luv music, and i asked her what it was, and she put it on for me in the car for a little bit and i thought it actually was really cool!! later on, i listened to a couple of jibara songs from this playlist i found; i haven’t gotten through much yet, but i guess i found canto a borínquen interesting, maybe cuz of the cover or the name or the fact willie colon took part in making it, but whatever it was, i kept it in my liked songs and left it for the holiday season since i didn’t feel like working on my charmed entry at the moment :P

i honestly don’t think i listened to canto a borínquen that much, especially compared to a song like charmed, but it still remained in my mind because of a different reason. i like my spanish class both cause it’s easy and cause of my teacher. she’s really nice and we’ve talked a little bit throughout the semester, with us even sharing a couple of music recommendations between each other! like the loser i am, a majority of the people i’ve talked at school has been with my teachers… they can afford to hear me run on about silly things (mostly music) that most other people don’t care about, since they get paid for it anwyay UT~TU but that doesn’t matter right nowww… since i wanted to do something special for the last class of the semester, and since it was the last class she was gonna be my teacher since she was rotating to another class for the next semester, i decided to make a playlist for her to put on in the background full of spanish songs and she thought it was a cool idea and along with a bunch of other of my fav spanish songs, i put canto a borínquen on there. i thought it was a really cool pick and even though i’m not really good at making playlists nor do i make them often, i think i did a decent enough job!! not that i mattered anyway since there probably wasn’t anyone listening to the playlist… xP

i haven’t really had much experience with salsa. it’s something that, of course, i’ve heard a bunch since i grew up with a puerto rican family, made by artists like willie colón and jerry rivera, but my family also just listens to other music a lot more of the time. my mom loves reggaeton, and my grandparents mostly listen to christian music (majorly latin pop), so i don’t really know much salsa music or know any salsa musicians. not to mention that i also have been listening to my own music for a long while now… as you can tell, a lot of it is caused by my aforementioned ignorance, but i also just haven’t really had as much exposure to it. for the longest time, i didn’t go out of my way to ignore what my parents listened to, but i mostly just was going down a very different path, with very different mediums to find new music through, so it was obvious that i wasn’t really gonna know much about what my parents listened to. over the years, i’ve picked up a few artists that i’ve hear in the background over the years and actually started to listen to them, like aventura and bad bunny, and it’s been really cool since i’ve come to find music that, originally of course sounded good to me, with more depth to me than ever before. it shows me more about why my parents like them so much and allows me to appreciate my upbringing a lot more in a way that’s special to me, which is really nice!!

however, salsa is something that i haven’t looked into much until now, and with listening to asalto navideño, i thought it would’ve been a great first experience with salsa made by the greats willie colón and héctor lavoe, along with yomo toro!! i don’t think you could ever go wrong with colón; from what i’ve heard, his music is really good, both from the songs i’ve listened to and his ratings on rym, and i thought now would be a great time to try to tackle another thing i’ve been struggling with, since the new year is upon us, while doing it through a medium that i love… music!! U^ ^U

first thing i wanna write a bit more about regarding the music itself is canto a borínquen, which was the song that introduced me to this album. i have listened to a couple other songs that colón has made, like triste y vacía, and i’ve also already written about how the salsa genre itself has been in the background of my life - albeit, not very often - but, i still have yet to actually dive into a salsa album and see what’s so good about the music. the first thing about salsa that i’d probably think about is likely how important trumpets are… trumpets are a really cool instrument and i don’t think that a lot of the mainstream or even a lot of the music i listen to nowadays make use of it. it makes sense, since it’s definitely not the most universal instrument to use as its tone especially is more rough than say, a saxophone or something, but it still definitely is a versatile instrument that can take part in creating really vibrant and awesome soundscapes that other instruments may not be as effective in shaping. i think the way the trumpet took the lead in this song was something that convinced me a lot in wanting to look more into salsa, as it’s just so amazing to listen to how eager and enthusiastic the melody sounds. how the cuatro is then layered to where it kinda reminds me of sprinkles on a cake, yet they still bring so much energy and brilliance to the song, was something i just realized and it’s really cool how it’s done, especially on here.

then, of course, i have to mention the percussion, but it’s not drums this time!! i absolutely love all kinds of percussion… when i was in the school band a couple years ago, i stuck to percussion, and it was really fun being able to look at and learn how to play all of these different instruments that add so much support and even drive songs. the percussion instrument i like the most here are the congos. congos are an instrument that i rarely hear in the songs that i listen to, which is fine as well since there are places where they are not as well suited as others, but i think they are still really versatile as well and i really like their sound and pace. even though they are kinda always in the background for me, they still seem like an essential part of the song and they have their own flavor of impact on the song that i can’t remember hearing in a ton of the music i primarily listen to. it feels as if every part of the song feels like their own separate channels but when put together, they are extraordinarily cohesive in a way that is unique to salsa, and i think this is one of the things that makes the genre so attractive and makes me wanna keep coming back and listening to it.

it makes me think of how the compositions of songs are visualized at times, where there’s these 2d and 3d diagrams of spheres in a certain space. i think in a lot of music, the drums are the foundation, acting like a floor to everything and is where everything is built on. other times, that definitely isn’t the case, as songs can be led by other instruments or conventional drums can just not be needed for it at all, but for songs like this, and maybe this could make sense as a way to describe the genre of salsa, but it feels more like a different kind of shape where there is no certain foundation, but instead it’s like a pentagon or a hexagon or a square. every point can be connected to another in a straight line and while the music doesn’t come crashing down if you take a specific side out since there’s no specific foundation that everything is built of that each separate instrument builds off of in the music, everything still works together so well, and the lack of a specific foundation possibly makes it all work together even better since instead of each part of the music just being connected to different joints of the composition of the music, it’s all arranged in a roundabout way where everything has a more circular and closer connection to each other than they would if it was arranged with a specific foundation. this might seem likee kinda crazy, but i hope it makes sense to at least someone xP

another song that i really liked would be traigo la salsa. from first listen, i absolutely loved this song cause it just captures the cheerful vibe that i love about the genre so well!! my favorite part of the song would definitely be soneros… the first verse is really cool because of just how they sound, and the lyrics are written really well. even though they are pretty simple, from the vocalizations at the start to it sounding kinda like a christmas carol about spice, they are just really really fun and that’s what makes them really nice to listen to for me! i also like how from there, after lavoe starts singing, they change to a more supportive role in the song, but they still have that same emotion and energy that they had from the beginning. this along with how good lavoe’s singing as well makes it even better.

when i listened to this in the car for the first time, which was still before the new year began, i instantly fell in love with it, and it actually made me feel even better and really hopeful for the next year!! it’s rare for me to feel emotions when i listen to music, and even though it’s easier for me when i listen to new music, it was different for me this time since it felt really unique and heartfelt which i was happy about :> another percussion instrument i’d like to quickly talk about is the maracas!! i think they are something that’s seen in a lot of salsa music, and it’s something that i like hearing here a lot. they do take on more of a background role, but i think it’s great at supplementing and shaping how the music sounds. it has really nice rhythm that along with the congos work well to overall make the song more fresh and pick up the pace in a way that would definitely be more difficult if only one or the other were in the song. i don’t really do it much, but it’s really cool to learn more about the structures of genres sometimes and look into the roles of each instrument and stuff like that!! that’s something that i could try learning more about this year as well… xP

pescao is the start of the second volume of asalto navideño and i’d say that it’s probably my favorite song on the compilation!! to be honesttt i think the second half of the project is better than the first by a noticeable amount, and this is a really cool way to start it off. i noticed that there’s a distinct shift in style that separates the first half from the second… maybe it’s just cause the cuatro is deeper and so is the trumpet at the start of the song or maybe how they both start playing at the beginning makes it different?? i’m not rly sure :P

but basicallyy this song is split into half from a standard salsa segment to the second half getting rid of the trumpets and instead you can primarily hear a whistle, maracas, and some bells!! i’m not sure if they are bells, but they kinda sound like them :P they really remind me of flashing christmas lights, where they each light up at their different times and they light up the room a ton. something i forgot to mention and look into before was the bass that you can hear throughout the songs also, but it’s something that i most notice in the second half of pescao. even though i think bass melodies are a lot simpler than other string instruments’ parts are in songs, they still definitely are important since they are an instrument that have the ability to drive the rhythm and i think it sounds really nice here too! with the lack of trumpet on this part, i find myself really resonating with how the bass kinda feels like it’s hugging both my ears and the song itself, maybe like a yarn coat or a sweater that feels really nice :o i think it’s really cool how much you can hear the bass throughout salsa music, at least how much it’s used throughout the album, but it stood out so much here that i just had to talk about it since it would be really silly of me to just let it pass by me!! :P

the last song i’ll write about is doña santos… i absolutely love this song cause it’s another really simple one yet it’s still so fun to listen to!! it’s all about dinner on christmas day and even though i don’t really eat much ever even if it’s during a special time like christmas ( which is a shame tbhh :< ) i still like eating foods during themm since the cooking is always really good!! i especially love arroz con gandules, which is one of my fav dishes ever; it’s a staple of puerto rican food and my parents make it a lot since it goes with a lot of things like meat and stuff :P i don’t really eat pork a lot but it tastes good as well!! this song honestly makes me happy to listen to since it’s great to just embrace the fun spirit of the song cause of how good the christmas food can be. what makes it better is that the cuatro especially shines on this song with how much more involved and free it is compared to the rest of the album and the trumpets sound even more joyful and loud here which is just so cool to hear since with the volume the tone changes as well!!

i also really like how prominent the piano is on the intermissions throughout the song… i find it interesting that the piano is something that is used a lot throughout the album, since it’s definitely not something that i’d think of a lot when thinking about the music or salsa in general, yet it actually fits really well here. how it’s used kinda reminds me of how jazz uses the piano as well, yet in contrast to jazz where it’s integral to the music, it takes more of a background role here. but, a lot of the time, you’ll hear it not just in this song, but in throughout the album as well where it goes along with the melody, which adds some more depth to the music. it’s cool to me how universal and versatile the piano is, more so than even guitars and the more standard instruments are… you can find them anywhere, whether it be the craziest to calmest of genres and sounds, and this is a great example of how cool the piano is!! i’m no pianist, but i still recognize its greatness nonetheless U^ ^U

i know that i am super super late to the holiday season by now but the goodness of this album really just makes me not care about it anymore xP i don’t think i’ve done something creative for the holiday season (like art and stuff) in at least a long time so it was nice to be able to do something for that since i wanted to get involved with the holiday spirit this year!! next holiday season when i get even more involved (you’ll see…) i hope to still be writing in my diary and write another holiday themed entry or at least make some art or something since that would be awesome!! alsoo it would definitely be cool to look into some more puerto rican music, whether it be by colón and lavoe or by someone else! to be honest, i already have an album in mind that i think would be cool to write about someday!! it’s a shame that more people on rym don’t look into puerto rican music… colón and lavoe are the only know that i know that are remotely well known and even then i don’t think they are that popular. bad bunny is the only other artist i can think of that is kinda well known on there but he’s crazyyy popular so that doesn’t surprise me. they are definitely missing out!!! :P