¡Viva Mexico! ¡Viva Pan America! Viva Momentos Musicales as we launch season six of our annual celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. This season takes us from Argentina to New York City, and even Alaska, as in the days and weeks ahead we learn of La Cadena de las Americas, while also being introduced to the substantial catalog of the Urtext record label of Mexico. The music travels by shortwave, LPs, and that miracle we know as radio.
If you were awakened by the sound of fireworks last night, around midnight, you may have switched on the television to see and hear one of Mexico's most boisterous holidays. It's called Dieciséis de Septiembre, marked by the famous declaration of “¡Viva Mexico!”
You might also have heard chorus and stanza from Mexico's National Anthem, declaring:
Mexicans, at the cry of war
prepare the steel and the bridle
and the Earth trembles at its core
to the resounding roar of the cannon.
In fact, Mexico's independence had been won by a war of revolution begun in 1810, yet their anthem was not written and ratified until 1853, when President Antonio López de Santa Anna sponsored a competition for a new national anthem. Poet Francisco González Bocanegra initially resisted entering, but according to the famous story, his fiancée Guadalupe González del Pino locked him in a room and refused to let him out until he produced an entry. He wrote the lyrics in four hours.
The winning music was subsequently composed by Jaime Nunó.
If you have the good fortune to hear a concert of independence day music today, you will likely hear José Pablo Moncayo's "Huapango," one of the most spirited and festive of songs.
Walk down the streets of your neighborhood and you might hear “Mexico Lindo y Querido,” a song of homesickness and patriotic love.
The song was written by Chucho Monge, but is most famously associated with Jorge Negrete.
Perhaps the most famous and effective lines ring with emotion:
Lovely, beloved Mexico / If I die far from you / May they say that I'm asleep / And may they bring me back here.
In fact, Jorge Negrete, whose recording of Mexico Lindo is famous wherever Spanish is sung, died in Los Angeles, Californa, in 1953, and his body was brought back to Mexico, mirroring the song's lyric.
Hear more stories and music from Latin America throughout Hispanic Heritage Month on Momentos Musicales, weekdays at 2:00 p.m. on KPAC 88.3 FM.
