Musical Interludes – Que Vaya Bien

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Regular readers will know that I am obsessed with the Mammals. Unfortunately, they are on sabbatical at the moment, but luckily individual activities abound. Michael Merenda’s great new CD Quiver was the first of these and now Tao Rodriguez-Seeger has a new CD Que Vaya Bien with Roy Brown and Tito Auger.

So I had never heard of Roy Brown and Tito Auger, which just shows my ignorance. They are both very popular Puerto Rican musicians. As I am just getting to know what non-classical British/American music I like, these are two more musicians for me to add to my list.

The music is in Spanish so I will not be thrilling you with my interpretation of the lyrics. Even though I would love to know why the cat was confused! If you want to know more about the musicians and their inspiration, this clip (from the English page of the Que Vaya Bien website) with Walter Wagoner, one of the producers, is very informative. I love knowing where the songs come from and what inspired them.

Mammal fans will find familiar rhythms and musical themes within most of these songs. Also one of the songs is a spanish version of Woody Guthrie’s Deportees. It feels familiar, but the music underneath is in sympathy with the latin feel of the rest of the CD.

I can’t help dancing the to title track “Que Vaya Bien el Mondo” and I appreciate that the chorus on El Cato Esta Confundido is a little dichordant and could be taken to be a cats’ chorus. The chorus is marching in Senores de la Guerra, similar to that of little drummer boy or Stop the Cavalry byJona Lewie, but that might because I was just listening to it. Also the last song is similar to one of the Anarchist Orchestra’s songs, at least I think so.

My only complaint about Que Vaya Bien is that it is too short. My solution is to put my player on to repeat, but that it isn’t totally satisfactory.

Strongly recommend you buy this CD now.

BTW the second video on Que Vaya Bien says a lot about why we hadn’t heard anything more about the free speech festival. Great music, crappy weather.

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2 thoughts on “Musical Interludes – Que Vaya Bien”

  1. I’m so glad you posted this. I just saw your post on the Mammals discussion forum and I followed it here. Tao is my favorite mammal, today is my birthday and I didn’t know about this new album. Now I’m going to CD Baby!

    Thanks!

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