This being the weekend before Christmas, a lot of people are having their Christmas parties around here. This means I get to hear all the crap taste in music people have in this area. There are a lot of Hispanic families in this apartment complex, and most of the Hispanics in the Central Florida area are Puerto Rican and Colombian (which is why I can’t seem to find a place that serves decent Cuban coffee within a few miles — there are a couple of restaurants, not at the low budget end, and some far away cafés, but nothing like the abundance of little places I was used to in Miami). And their taste in music sucks.
Actually, Hispanic music in general is just crappy. Salsa, merengue, all that jazz. Well, it’s not even jazz — it’s shrill-voiced guys hollering to be heard over screechy horn sections. And then for the younger folk there is the Latin-ized disco which is like disco only unimaginably worse.
Note: this is not Spanish music. Spain has an entirely different musical culture, very little of which seems to remain in its former colonies here in the Western hemisphere. I love flamenco, Spanish guitar, etc. Except for some stray guitar in some songs, most of the stuff over here is all horns and drums. I read a mystery novel once where some of the characters were Hispanic (the story was set in Los Angeles), and one thing I remember was the non-Hispanic heroine complaining that Hispanic music was too emotionally overwrought and frenetic for her tastes. It makes opera seem calm. It’s music for bipolar people. (And it’s funny, but most of the Cubans and so on that I knew were very calm and relaxed — if they were over forty. Before that they’re like mental patients who won’t take their meds — everything is a big drama, OYE MIJO NO ME JODAS MAS “Let’s go slash my ex-boyfriend’s tires” constant screeching fights about everything. But then they get married and settle down and once middle age hits it’s like they calm down and mellow out. But they still listen to that awful music!)
Anyway, I had let Xena out on the patio but she freaks out if I close the door so I made her come inside because there was no way I was leaving the door open and listening to that noise. So now she is mad at me.
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