Love Songs in Spanish for Enjoyment and Learning by Robert Stuart Thomson (review)

Robert Stuart Thomson’s Love Songs in Spanish for Enjoyment and Learning contains a selection of twenty four beautiful Spanish-language boleros, tangos, rancheras and other love songs (on an accompanying CD), around which a lesson is built. The author has provided general background information for each of the songs, as well as some specific language notes for learners of Spanish. Among the songs there are such classics as Gardel’s “Mi Buenos Aires querido” and “El día que me quieras,” Agustín Lara’s “Granada” and Ernesto Lecuona’s “Siboney” (both in Plácido Domingo’s rendition), as well as the birthday standard “Las mañanitas.”

Each of the 24 lessons is accompanied by black-and-white photographs of the composer or performer; a Spanish song lyric with an English translation; Thomson’s notes about the historical context of each composition; his interpretation of the song meaning, and several grammar- and lexicon-related outlines (e.g., about idioms). The author, a music lover, writes that the idea for the volume originated some decades ago when he became familiar with Spanish-language songs during his travels in Mexico and wanted to consult a book with composer biographies, original lyrics and an analysis of the poetic elements of each song. I wholeheartedly agree that target-language songs can provide a memorable, emotion-charged supplementary teaching method.

Thomson’s suggestions for how the text could be used include a cloze text, in which an instructor can white out specific words or phrases from the lyric (such as different past-tense forms of verbs, etc.). Although the author recommends that students print the translation of nouns and verbs as the instructor plays any given song several times (109), this need not be the main goal of the activity, depending on the learning objectives of any language program. “Students will need space to write in an accurate translation” (111), writes the author, and, in a grammar-translation course this might be a worthwhile goal, albeit not universally applicable. Other interesting, fun suggestions are song-related projects (for intermediate or advanced levels of proficiency), such as assigning essays about the life and work of a composer or recording artist; the origins of different musical genres, or simply about why a learner finds a song meaningful (117) or how it has been used in a film soundtrack. A thought-provoking prompt is “what to appreciate in the songs.” Thomson poses such questions as: “What is the song about? What does the song reflect about the culture which gave rise to it? What makes the song typically Mexican, Argentinean, Catholic, tropical . . . ?” (11). These are, of courses, very broad questions that could lead to fascinating explorations of what students believe is “typically” Mexican or Catholic and thus question their own assumptions and biases. Such topics would work very well, I believe, in mixed groups composed of heritage and non-heritage learners.

Some analysis questions, such as: “Does the songwriter use personification and apostrophe, i.e. pathetic fallacy,” (11) or whether the song is written in a major or minor key, use concepts that should be defined beforehand so that learners can benefit from thinking about them. Others are truly difficult to answer, such as: “Are the lyrics original or unusual?” (11), or “does the music seem original”? The answers will depend, of course, on each listener’s experience and exposure to art in Spanish, as well as what each individual learner may consider (un)usual or (un)original. Some statements may be found problematic for certain learners. For instance, a reference to a “commonly held idea in Mexico” (23) that “certain regions of the country produce the most beautiful women” may spark interesting discussion. I believe that the use of the diminutive form farolito in “Mi Buenos Aires querido” is not an example of a pathetic fallacy, defined as “the composer attributes emotion to an object (el farolito);” it is a simple use of the diminutive...