Quick Bites: Dancing and crying to Reyna Tropical
Weighing life's big questions and dualities with headphones on.
Quick Bites are singular, occasional looks at one song that I’m vibing with at the moment.
Last month, I had the immense pleasure of interviewing one of my favorite musicians, Fabi Reyna of Reyna Tropical, for the second time. During our interview we talked about how it has been for Fabi since the death of her band mate, Sumo, and also releasing her debut album, Malegría.
Our interview is live now, so give it a read if you’d like. But one of the things that struck me the most about our talk was a conversation about dualities. Fabi explained that she thinks many people think of duality as two things separated by a chasm. But, for her, those things are more mobile, they can intersect and stand parallel to each other at different times.
One of my favorite songs on the album, “Conocerla,” is a perfect example of this duality. In it, Fabi sings:
Si tu quieres conocerla tienes que saber lo que
Le da igual amor, dolor
Bailamos despacito para que nos quite el calor
Ayy, Agradecimiento cuando caminas para ca
This roughly translates to:
If you want to get to know her, you have to know
What also gives her love, gives her pain
Lets slowly dance to take a way the heat
Gratitude when you come my way.
Here, we see the duality between knowing her and not knowing her, love and pain, coolness and heat.
I’m struck mostly by this assertion that what gives us love can also cause us pain, but, then again, it’s one of life’s most enduring truths. In life, the people I have loved have brought me the most pain. The things I have loved, poetry, music, art, have brought me love and pain.
The struggle is, how do you manage that? How do you make sense of it? For me, at this stage in my life, my answer is to love in spite. Because what else is there? When I think about making friends or trying to date again, the voice in me that says but what if I get hurt? is louder than anything. Still I let myself love anyway, because it’s beautiful when you anticipate the pain but are instead met with a loving hand.
As I have been taking the time to learn Spanish this year, I’ve taken pleasure in learning songs sung in Spanish, and this is one I can sing along to almost perfectly.
It’s a gorgeous song that holds so much, as does the entirety of Malegría. The album is a testament to what we can hold, who we can be when we allow ourselves to relish in our multiplicity.