Cool post over at Aentwaereps about the Antwerp singer, Willy van de Velde, who grew up above the Bernad family’s “Spanish shop”, took guitar lessons from Ilse Alfonso, and called himself El niño de San Andrés because it sounded cooler than something like That geezer from St Andrew’s. As Godzjumenas observes, there’s no direct trace…
Transhumance is in the air, so here’s a smutty song from a commie from Zaragoza: Los pastores se van, se van, Los pastores lloran, lloran: ¡ay de mí, pobre pastora! ¿con quién follarás tú ahora? Rejigged: The shepherds are going, they’re going again, The shepherds are weeping, they’re wailing this strain: “Alas, alack, oh Phyllis…
I guess Esterella is a play on Esther, as in Lambrechts, and the Spanish estrella, star. The obvious connection is in the Sephardi community, but it would be interesting to know why Russian immigrant Charly Schleimovitz thought this stage name would work for his client and wife, the Antwerp nightingale, the Belgian Zarah Leander. Godzjumenas…
Whoever runs Fabirol‘s website tells us on a page re a museum near Zaragoza called La casa del gaitero, Bagpiper House in corporate speak, that in Aragon gaitero can be used to describe any popular musician. What would an equivalent lowest-common-denominator term be in the English-speaking world? “Artiste” misses the instrument component and, frequently, the…
Gerry Studds was, as far as I know, the only Portuguese-speaking member of the US Congress. His name always made me think of that bit in “My old man’s a dustman” which goes “He wears gor-blimey trousers/With the studs sewn down the back.” Googling I find “He wears cor-blimey trousers/And he lives in a council…