Besame Mucho Festival is coming to Texas March 2. The festival is truly one of a kind, jam packed with some of Latin music’s most iconic acts from a span of genres. Los Tigres del Norte (who will soon be playing RodeoHouston) and Ramón Ayala will be there. There will be a rock stage with revered acts like Café Tacvba, Juanes and El Tri. Latin pop will be represented too, with headliners like Gloria Trevi, Reik and Alejandra Guzmán all sharing a stage.
In short, the festival will be a thrilling showcase of more than 75 acts headed for Austin, the first time the festival will venture out of Los Angeles. I’ll be venturing to the festival with my wife and friends and am stoked to check out bands like Caifanes, Spanish ska band Inspector, Mägo de Oz (Latin music’s answer to Flogging Molly) and Ha*Ash, the Houston-based “Reinas del Sold Out,” who I interviewed last year.
There’s not much that can dampen the mood of attending a star-studded music fest with good friends, as we’ll be doing; but, there is one minor hurdle to clear headed to the event. I don’t really speak Spanish and every act on the outlandish bill is a Spanish-language act.
My wife has assured me we’ll have a great time just dancing and being with people we enjoy. As she usually is, she’s right, of course; but, the word hound in me won’t let up. I gotta know the lyrics to and meanings of these songs. It’s a long, boring story as to why Sendejas never learned the language. Let’s boil it down to parents who were bullied because of their early struggles with English being over-protective coupled with me being too lazy to teach myself.
But now, I’m trying and I’m using the songs of some of the acts I’ll be seeing to improve my weak Spanish skills. I created an entire playlist-slash-curriculum. Can this work? It sounds like a dumb idea, so I decided to ask some of the smartest people around whether it could. Language professors from Rice University and the University of Houston-Downtown answered whether music is an effective means to learn a new language and if they employ it in their own instruction.
Since I’m trying to learn Spanish, I reached out to Spanish language instructors first, kind folks willing to respond like Jose Jacobo, Ph. D., a lecturer in Spanish at Rice’s Center for Languages and Intercultural Communication. Jacobo said he enjoys all kinds of music, everything from ranchera king Jose Alfredo Jimenez to corridos to punk bands like A Day to Remember and PXNDX. His favorite genre is rap and he lists Cosculluela and Sharif Fernandez as must-adds to my “Learn Spanish Now!” playlist. He said, yes, he has used music in his second language classroom instruction.
Jacobo pointed to “Si Estuvieras Conmigo” by Grupo Liberacion as a song he’ll use to “show how certain grammatical structures function in a context,” he said. “The first stanza uses the present tense and the present perfect to introduce the initial context. Starting with the second stanza there is a shift to the ‘if clause plus past imperfect subjunctive plus conditional’ to present a contrary to fact situation – If you were with me, I would treat you better.
“The visuals of the music video also contribute to the understanding and meaning making of the new grammatical aspect. After students focus on grammar and learn the relationship between the tenses, they can expand into other topics,” Jacobo continued. “For example, the music video presents the traditional Disney depiction of princesses, women trapped in a place and a man comes to rescue her. Students expand on similarities with their own background and pop culture and talk about the issues of depicting women as passive princesses in mass media. Usually, the song is used as a starting point to introduce the new grammar and expand on a topic.
“Music can also be used to introduce new vocabulary along with cultural artifacts,” Jacobo added. “For example, I have also used ‘La Recta Final’ by Puerto Rican rapper Vico C to introduce societal issues. You can start by asking students to state local societal problems that exist in the city — in this case Houston — before being exposed to the song. This triggers their current knowledge about the topic. With this song, students are introduced not only to new vocabulary, but to the role that ‘canción protesta’ has had in Latin America and Spain to protest injustices. In addition, the song briefly alludes to ‘the conquest’ which shows how that historical event is still part of the collective imaginary in Latin America.”
“We say that language acquisition is input-driven, input being actual meaning-bearing exemplars of the language in question. Language learners, be they first- or second-language learners, must be exposed and attend to the messages encoded in that input in order to successfully develop the mental representation of the language,” said Paul B. Mandell, Ph.D., associate professor and Spanish applied linguistics coordinator in the University of Houston-Downtown’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences’ Spanish Program.
“That input may be in many forms, both oral and visual, and may include the format of music,” he continued. “Truth be told, depending upon the lyrics and tune of the piece in question, many times it is easier to attend to the input in a piece of music due to the repetition and rhyme in a particular piece.”
Dr. Mandell makes a good point here. Listening to my playlist, songs like Gloria Trevi’s “Pelo Suelto” (which is a still a jam, y’all) fit this bill. The song is about letting one’s hair down and being true to one’s self and the line “A mí me gusta andar de pelo suelto” sells its point again and again.
Mandell might agree Trevi’s song is a good “Intro to Spanish” track, but he might steer me clear of a song like “Chandwich a la Chichona” by Mexican rap-rock legends Molotov, a cheeky song written when the band was either hungry or horny. It’s probably not course material, but I still can’t wait to hear it live at Besame Mucho.
“I, and others in the profession, keep an ear out — you should pardon the mixed metaphor — for music and lyrics that are relatively easy to understand for the way the singer articulates the lyrics and that may be of potential interest to the demographics of the students in question,” he said. “To those ends, I have used everything from Andrea Bocelli and Christina Aguilera’s recording of ‘Somos Novios’ in a first-semester course, again because of the repetition and clarity with which they sing lyrics that are easily understood by beginning students of Spanish, to recordings of ‘No Llores por Mí, Argentina” from the musical Evita, again due to the clarity with which the singer articulates the lyrics.
“When looking for pieces of music for language learners, I generally lean towards ballads and away from, for example, rap music, as the lyrics of the latter are frequently more colloquial in nature and more difficult to follow for learners not quite familiar with idiomatic expressions or the speed with which rap artists sing. I also keep in mind the types of vocabulary and language with which the learners are already somewhat familiar — as in, they know what the words mean and how they sound – so that it is easier for them to hear and make out the lyrics in context. Following those guidelines, there are always new options appearing in recordings.”
Recently, my crazy idea was given a jolt by some eager learners, the students at South Houston High School in Pasadena. Speaking with them on Career Day about freelance writing careers, I met a couple of students who love Japanese music. A friendly kid named Joshua said they listen to music to learn the language as they hope to do university studies in Japan after graduation.
Though she was in Los Angeles for a meeting with the Japan Foundation, Rice’s Naoko Ozaki, Ph.D took time to answer whether Joshua has a good shot at learning the language from songs in his playlist. Dr. Ozaki is a Japanese lecturer in the university’s Center for Languages and Intercultural Communication and her input is especially pertinent as she is a classical music pianist who learned at least one of the several languages she knows from her own love of music.
“My favorite musician is Richard Clayderman. In fact, he is one of the reasons I began studying English. As a little child, I found his music so fascinating that I began daydreaming about meeting him and playing the piano next to him,” Ozaki said. “Richard Clayderman is a French pianist, but at his concert one year, he said on the microphone, ‘Konnichiwa. That’s the only Japanese word I know. So now I’m going to speak in English.’ This was enough for me to start wanting to learn English.
“Today, I love Arabic songs. I have a BA in the Arabic language and Ph.D. in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education with a minor in Arabic. When I create Japanese language exams for my students, I am often listening to some older, but not classic, Arabic songs from Egypt and Lebanon, because they remind me of the great joy I had in studying the Arabic language I love so much.”
Ozaki has taken that personal experience and applied it to an instructional setting. She knows the marriage of music and language works because it worked for her. And, she said, many of her students are interested in learning Japanese because they love J-Pop or “ani-son,” short for “anime songs.”
“Before I left Japan for Germany at age 14, I had learned most of the hit songs by the Beatles. These songs taught me quite a bit about the English pronunciation, especially how word-final-consonants are pronounced together with the word-initial-vowels, useful expressions and some not so useful expressions. These songs are, unless created for educational purposes, created by and for the speakers of the language. In other words, the Beatles did not create and perform to help ESL or EFL learners. This means that they used words to express freely how they felt or what they wanted to say. This is one of the biggest differences between foreign language textbook sentences created for learners of the language and naturally expressed words and phrases in a song created by and for speakers of the language.
“The very fact that ‘Ticket to Ride’ by the Beatles has ‘She don’t care’ instead of ‘She doesn’t care’ is a statement of its own. Perhaps it says a lot about who the singers are, their backgrounds, the social groups they belong to or a regional touch. It could perhaps be a statement saying, ‘We are singing because we want to, not to please grammar police.’ As a song to use in ESL/EFL class, though, it could potentially be very difficult. The teacher could encourage the students to learn to sing along only to say, ‘Oh, by the way, don’t speak like the Beatles.’”
Dr. Ozaki really deep dived into my question, offering way more than space allows here, so much that I want to know even more, the sign of a great instructor. She is using everything from manga to the LGBTQ+ Japanese act ENVii Gabriella and children’s songs to teach the language. Ozaki’s use of a children’s song – taught on the first day of each semester – neatly ties this whole notion together.
“Students learn this song within the first minute and in the next few minutes, I can easily use this song to explain concepts of intonation, honorific expressions, onomatopoeia, and a commonly played word game in Japanese,” she explained. “I teach this even in the first semester Japanese language course. This particular song is truly useful as it teaches so many things in such a short amount of time. I also believe that learning this short song on the first day of classes gives students a sense of accomplishment as well, as they will be encouraged to have fun in this class.”
Did it really take a bunch of Ph.D.s to make my dumb idea seem smart? Probably not, though you gotta admit, it was fascinating. And Dr. Ozaki is right – it’s been fun to use music to try to improve my own Spanish skills. In the end, I’ll just follow the instructions of the smartest person I know, my wife, the one who told me to relax, enjoy my day with her and our friends, being under the sun at a festival, dancing like crazy and enjoying the unifying power of music.