Una Larga Noche – Hearing It For The First Time

Drinking hard liquor is really not my thing.  Seriously, it isn’t.  In my area, drinking hard liquor straight usually means whiskey or cognac, also known as brown liquor.  Brown liquor, it’s often the mother’s milk used by souls to wash away the lingering, unrequited scent of more.

I do drink socially on occasion.  My friends who drink don’t call what I do drinking.  I can nurse a shot until the melting ice turns into liquory flavored water.  However… when I first heard Ms Eva Ayllón’s version of Chabuca Granda’s Una Larga Noche… though I only understood the words in the refrain as A Long Night, her smoldering delivery, the arrangement - I could see myself going for a bottle of brown liquor. 

Instead, I went for an internet search to find a translation.  I saw differences in the translations.  Then, there was the word Zamacueca.  Browser website searches gave me a lead.  I saw mention of a dance.  So, I searched for video.  I found one.  I watched.  “Oh! Okay, this might take 2 bottles.”

Ms Granda’s original and Ms Ayllón arrangement, I like both.  I have yet to listen to either song play completely through only twice.  Ms Granda’s original is lingering perfume tossing covers back sitting on the side of the bed with your hot face in your hands pining away until a morning that never comes.  Ms Ayllón’s arrangement - all the previous plus turn up the flame until the pot boils runs down the side and scorches then add brown liquor.

Eva Ayllón
Use Translate on Your Web Brower
http://www.evaayllon.net/eva.php
or 
http://www.sonicbids.com/2/EPK/?epk_id=355695#bio

Aside from Una Larga Noche, when I play Ms Ayllón songs, something connects.  Some would call it a common ancestry.  I can’t deny that.  The soulfulness in her voice is familiar.  Her dance shadows movements I know.  Her band, that rhythm section, those percussions – who says that teleportation doesn’t exist.  She beams me to a place both familiar and foreign.

I will write about how and why this post came to fruition in another blog post.  For now, I want to thank Ms Ayllón and one of her managers, Juan Morillo, for granting this country kid from Coosa County, Alabama permission to post the translation they provided.  Mr. Morillo wrote that the following translation “...is closer to the original intent of the author, Chabuca Granda, and Eva's interpretation.”  Additionally, Mr. Morillo provided links to her bio, tour information, and concert clips.

Una Larga Noche

(A Long Night)

Written by Chabuca Granda

A long night

envelops me and holds me

and it protects me and loses me

Zamacueca, zamacueca

I lost a long night

Why is the night so long

And amazed and so lonely and so heartless

If it's just if it's just a long night

Zamacueca, zamacueca

It's just a long night

The night should be

A long dawn, scented, clear

And blue, an embroidered sheet

Of rumors and loves

or a morning star

invasive, vigilant

of my closed window

Zamacueca, zamacueca

of my closed window

My night is never dawn

That comes in the morning

It's just a long ledge

That turns around nothingness,

Zamacueca, zamacueca

That turns around nothingness

It's just fear my night

Slow fear, slow and long

Always slow, always within

Within a long night.

Zamacueca, zamacueca

I am lost in a long night

and it’s just a long night

zamacueca, zamacueca,

of my closed window

That turns around nothingness

zamacueca, zamacueca

within a long night,

within a long night,

zamacueca, zamacueca,

within a long night.

Ms Eva Ayllón’s Bio In English

Facebook Tour Information and Video

Ms Ayllón’s website

Chabuca Granda’s Bio on Wikipedia

Una Larga Noche Sample on Amazon

Best not to drink at all. If you do, be responsible.

And Happy Valentine's Day