The Lambada

Music in time

I have a memory of childhood.

I am on holiday with my parents, and it is evening by the poolside. I think that we are in Cyprus, but we could be in Italy. I have found myself unusually alone; perhaps my parents are in the room, or the restaurant, indicating that I am old enough to have snuck out alone for a while. I must be about ten, younger even. The pool is completely deserted and packed up until morning. From an area where other people are, I hear music, and I stand a moment there entranced by it, marvelling at its beauty, the way it unwinds in the night.

It is the Lambada and, although I may have heard it before, I am now listening.

Many famous songs are beautiful, we just hear them so often that we stop noticing. This is why the music we hear as children impacts as so much; we are being introduced to both a song and a style, experiencing our possibilities of the world expand through sound. While music retains its power to capture and heal us, as you grow older that power diminishes. We would perhaps do well to act sparingly with the music we love – to not literally play it ‘to death’. Asked what music he liked, the author JM Coetzee replied, ‘Music I have never heard before.’

Yet music doesn’t seem to lose one of its powers, namely that of evoking the time in which we first heard it. Hearing that magical song, I feel once again connected to childhood. Trying to make sense of what I heard inspires me to add that most adult of garnishes, a selection of facts.

Known colloquially as ‘The Lambada’, the song ‘Chorando Se Fo’ (‘They left in tears’) is performed by the Franco-Brazilian band Kaoma, itself a Portuguese version of the Spanish-language song ‘Llorando Se Fue’ by the Bolivian folk band Los Kjarkas (who are still together).  The Kjarkas original is slower and relies on panpipes but it clearly the same tune; the band sued Kaoma for failing to credit them and won. The famous version is Kaoma’s, though, and the singer on the recording is Laowala Braz, herself found dead in a burnt-out car 73km east of Rio de Janeiro in January 2017. The circumstances of this elegant tune are then just as mired in human tragedy and greed as everything else: What else would we sing about if it weren’t? There is no clear blue water between art and life.  

That young boy who was really hearing it for the first time knew nothing of all that and couldn’t have grasped it even if he had been told. He is not thinking, just opening himself up to the music, and I almost rediscover that openness thinking of him now. All the years set to rain down on his head make no difference – he is only concerned with what he can see and hear.

Life is rhythm, poetry, music. Not narrative, story, resolution. Of all the arts music brings us closest to this, this poetic conception of things; rather than being commentary on life, music as a form comes closer to life itself. As soon as we move into the realm of story and words we are into sense-making and coping mechanisms and are making our experiences into something more digestible and neater than they are to be found in reality. In this analysis, telling stories is as much obfuscating as illuminating the world, creating patterns of sense which only make sense if consumed in a certain order. Music takes us out of anything so simple as boring old linear time.   

Being young is to some extent having music inside. It is nights and friendships where music seems to naturally move through events, its passage often smoothed by alcohol. Young people, particularly those in love, watch musicals as documentaries and are prone to express their opinions through dancing and singing. In recent years, as I approach middle age, I have felt my internal music fade. The sound from the poolside has grown fainter; I am further along in my song.

Chorando se foi
Quem um dia só me fez chorar
Chorando se foi
Quem um dia só me fez chorar

But it still apprehends me at certain moments. For example, when I hear ‘Llorando se fue’ unexpectedly, as I did in the café where I sit now, where I had come to write my piece about the exact same song.  

A recordação
Vai estar com ele aonde for
A recordação

The Lamabada has followed me through my short and curiously rich life. Pool sides, cafes, discos – again and again we have encountered each other at different points in time. It’s always the same tune but the different layers of experience I acquire means I hear it differently. And perhaps because I don’t know Portuguese, or because I have such a clear memory of first hearing it, this song has never lost its mystery to me.

There’s old music but I doubt there’s much music that makes us feel old.