Music I’d always associate with my parents
Papi
1. Dire Straits - Not the popular songs like “Money For Nothing”, but the dark, moody ones like “Fade To Black”, “Your Latest Trick”, “Rüdiger”, “News”, and “On Every Street”, which supplied my childhood (and early adulthood) fantasies with scenes from film noir.
2. Pink Floyd - Weird, wonderful, experimental, and highly political music that my mother hated. Just hated. Made me love it all the more in my strange, rebellious way.
3. Paul Simon - Mainly his album, Graceland, which my mom also hated. Again, I loved it, but not out of rebelliousness but in response to its positive, playful attitude.
Mami
1. Gloria Estafan – I can’t think of a single song that she has written, but for some reason I’ve always liked Gloria Estafan and associated her with my mother in a positive way. She was always heads and shoulders above most of the other Spanish female singers of the time. I guess, in retrospect, she’s like the Shakira of the late 80s, a sexy, intelligent, and totally respectable Latina musician.
2. Gypsy Kings - These guys were incredible. Just incredible.
3. Assorted Kurdish music. At some point my mother decided she was Kurdish and Lebanese, and so came a wave of wonderful, incredible Kurdish music. (I should really figure out who those artists were.)
So Kate Bush’s “Sunset” from Aerial always reminds me of my parents. It just sounds like a conglomeration of all of those musicians in one.
Each Kate Bush song has a deeply personal meaning to me just like this.
