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7. Woman as Absence: Hetero(homo)sexual Desire in the Bolero
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c h a p t e r s e v e n Woman as Absence Hetero(homo)sexual Desire in the Bolero Amor es un algo sin nombre que obsesiona a un hombre por una mujer . . . [Love is a nameless something that makes a man obsessed with a woman . . .] —Pedro Flores, “Obsesión” A working-class Latina from Detroit acknowledged during my interview with her that “cuando estoy en un baile y escucho salsa, no le presto mucha atención a las palabras . . . pero cuando es un bolero sí le pongo atención” [when I go dancing, I don’t pay much attention to the lyrics of salsa music . . . but when a bolero plays I do listen carefully to the lyrics]. This observation reveals her awareness that, as a member of a musical audience, she engages different listening strategies depending on the musical form she is hearing. Her musical competence leads her to listen more carefully to the lyrics of a bolero, the quintessential romantic ballad in Latin America, than to salsa songs. While she well enjoys the fast rhythms of the latter, it is the slow tempo of the bolero and the importance of both its lyrics and the voice of the singer that seduces her into listening closely. Given the highly literary nature of this musical form, I will focus first on reading and analyzing bolero lyrics as a musical space in which Woman (or the feminine) is constructed mostly as absence, an absence that stimulates the expression and articulation of male desire through the text/song and through the act of singing. Despite the predominance of the male singing subject in this musical tradition, recent scholarship and postmodern fiction have successfully regendered the discourse of the bolero. Iris Zavala’s essay “De héroes y heroínas en lo imaginario social: El discurso amoroso del bolero” and Luis Rafael Sánchez’s La importancia de llamarse Daniel Woman as Absence / 125 Santos, an original rendering of the male icon of guarachas and boleros both capitalize on the bolero’s sublimated erotic discourse, subversively reinterpreting it as homoerotic rewriting. Although the bolero implies a different listening mode from that evoked by salsa, this romantic musical genre has been a central subtext of heterosexual love and an influential tradition that informs the discourse of desire and sexual politics in salsa music. The origins of the bolero have been traced to Cuba at the turn of the century, more specifically to around 1885 and 1886. These years coincide with the historical emergence of the danzón, characterized by the habanera rhythm, which constitutes the rhythmical foundation for the bolero.1 The late 1880s also mark the emergence of modernismo in Latin America, the neo-romantic revolution in poetic language and literature that represents the early stages of literary modernity. And as Iris Zavala has suggested, the idealizing, preciosista, abstract yet sensual and refined imagery and lexicon of modernismo informs the discourse of love embodied in the bolero.2 Agustín Lara’s composition “Mujer” illustrates the ethereal, idealizing and mythifying textualization of Woman as divine seductress, echoing Spanish romantic poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer’s Rimas and the modernista leader Rubén Darío’s poetic imagery of the feminine, a language that systematically renders woman as dematerialized, not real: Mujer, mujer divina, tienes el veneno que fascina en tu mirar. Mujer alabastrina, tienes vibración de sonatina pasional, tienes el perfume de un naranjo en flor, el altivo porte de una majestad. Sabes de los filtros que hay en el amor, tienes el hechizo de la liviandad, la divina magia de un atardecer, y la maravilla de la inspiración. Tienes en el ritmo de tu ser todo el palpitar de una canción. Eres la razón de mi existir, mujer. [Woman, woman divine in your look you hold the poison that seduces, Alabaster-like woman, you hold the vibrations of a passionate sonatina, you hold the scent of an orange blossom, the royal pose of a queen. You know about the filters of love, you hold a spell with your lightness, The divine magic of a sunset, and the marvel of inspiration. You hold in the rhythms of your being all the palpitations of a song. You are the reason for my existence, woman.]3 d i s s o n a n t m e l o d i e s / 126 [44.197.251.102] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 08:08 GMT) In this...