For me music and my memories are closely intertwined. For example, I associate certain pieces of classical music with the hours that my father and I used to spend together because those pieces were often playing on the record player. Certain albums remind me summers when I listened to the albums over and over again. For me certain pieces of music or songs are also tied to dance, and every week I add to my dance memory library when I go to dance with the women in my hula group.
In today's poetry title we see how memories are tied to music and dance in other people's lives. We visit a music shop where the patrons tell us stories that are vibrant with music and the sound of dancing feet.
Under the Mambo Moon
In today's poetry title we see how memories are tied to music and dance in other people's lives. We visit a music shop where the patrons tell us stories that are vibrant with music and the sound of dancing feet.
Under the Mambo Moon
Julia Durango
Illustrated by Fabricio VandenBroeck
Poetry Book
For ages 6 to 8
Charlesbridge, 2011, 978-1-57091-723-3
On summer evenings Marisol helps her father in the family
music store. Marisol’s Papi tells her that the “you can / read people’s souls
by the music they listen to,” and that people come into their store to “buy
dreams / and memories.”
A steady stream
of people comes and goes, and they all have music related memories that they
share with Marisol and her Papi. Mrs. Garcia is a house cleaner who, at the end
of the day, comes home with a tired and aching back. She tells Marisol about
her quinceanera, when she wore a pink dress and a tiara and when she danced to
the mariachi band tunes all afternoon.
Catalina has
been buying mangoes at the grocery store and she has her own music story to
tell. She, unlike the many people who like to dance the waltz wearing formal
gowns and suits, likes to dance the cha-cha-cha. In her party dress and pink
high heels, she likes to “shine like a jewel” on the dance floor.
Professor Soto
is missing his home in the Andes and he tells Papi and the other folk in the
shop about a pan pipe player that he saw in park the day before. The musician
has performed in concerts in five countries, and when he plays the haunting
sounds of his pipes take listeners far away to his “highland home” where the
wind whistles through the “cracks and crevices.”
Mr. and Mrs.
Mayer then come in. Mrs. Mayer looks like “an old-time movie star,” and she and
her husband know how to dance the tango. Papi asks her to give them a “quick
tango lesson.”
In this
wonderful book we go into a music shop and meet the people there, all of whom
love the music, and often the dance, of Latin America. We hear about the
rhythms of the music and see how talking about the music and dance brings
people’s past, present and future to life. Together they share their stories in
the shop and then, when the day ends, Marisol and her family create their own musical
memories.