"Nuestro Himno", Electric Fences and Nelly Furtado: Music's Influence on the Immigration Rights Movement

Dr. Julianne Escobedo Shepherd's Interrobang column at Pitchfork continues to impress. Her latest piece details her history with "Cielito Lindo", an old Mexican folksong abused by American advertising executives, and its direct impact on her understanding of the current immigration rights movement taking place in the United States.

So while "Cielito Lindo" is hardly an immigrant protest song like "El Deportado," for me, its staggering, expressive melody, narrative of brown eyes and mountains, and lesson of singing in the face of sorrow, is inextricable with my beloved grandma and the attached realities of her (eventually naturalized) immigrant status-- working poverty, broken English, pride in her motherland and appreciation for her adopted country.

"Nuestro Himno", known for its sort of drama, also plays a role in Shepard's take on the current situation for Mexican-Americans, including the suggestion of a National Anthem in Spanish.

She points out that the last time she heard the National Anthem in English, she was at a basketball game, and it was followed up by "Whoomp! There It Is" while a floating blimp tried to sell me a lizard, car insurance and a $7 beer." This is what we're getting all sactimonious about? Or does the National Anthem not mean any less just because it's tossed around like Nerf? Besides all of that, is the National Anthem necessarily less relevant simply because our standards in terms of national pride have sort of slipped off in the last 20 years?

But, as Shepard suggests, the ultimate point isn't just what kind of anthems we have, the point is visibility for Mexican-Americans. She goes on:

Nelly Furtado, whose parents emigrated from Portugal to Canada before she was born, has a clause in her record contract that states she is allowed to sing at least two songs in Portuguese on every album. But her 2003 album Folklore was her most specific work about la cultura; it yielded "Forca"-- which was the official song for the European World Cup in 2004 and became Portugal's de facto anthem-- and the hip-hop influenced pop song "Fresh off the Boat" in both English and Portuguese. The latter is a song about the sweet relief of emigrating to a freer country, and while the lyrics are simple and impressionistic, the m.o. is clear: visibility.

Happy Memorial Day, everyone. Take a few minutse and read Shepard's piece in whole over at Pitchfork.