My Introduction to A Media Luz
When at a relatively early age I showed interest in music, mother insisted that if I were to study an instrument it had to be a church organ on which to play church music. My father, on the other hand, insisted that I study theory so that I could conduct Verdi's music and nothing else. Needless to say, my musical aspirations went nowhere. My interest in the Spanish language also met with similar brick walls in that mother had never heard any of our priests speak the language and father never having heard Verdi's operas sung in it. This happened to me in Malta during the fifties; I cannot say that this was norm for most of the children of my generation, just the luck of the draw.
The islands of Malta, Gozo and Comino
in the Mediterranean 90 km. south of Sicily.
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When I mention my mother's interest in church music, I do not wish to create the impression that any composition directly or indirectly associated with Catholic liturgy was acceptable. As far as she was concerned good music began and ended with single line chant: the Gregorian Chant I later learned to associate with the pre-Palestrina times. Our Parish Priest, at one of his frequent visits to our home, discussed a Requiem Mass by Mozart with my father in a friendly argument over its comparison with Verdi's. Mother would have none of that. Father, on the other hand, believed there were two types of music: the good music composed by Giuseppe Verdi and everything else.
By the middle part of the decade the local radio station was still playing Big Band Era music and it was only around 1958 or 59 that one could not turn a radio on without Jacob Gade's haunting melody "Jealousie Tango Tsigane" immediately invading the room - my introduction to the magical word "Tango". It is hard to imagine today that at the time no one could have convinced me that the word was already half a century old.
In our house, the word Tango was anathema. The very mention of the word was generally accompanied by the lowering of the voice to barely a whisper, and all kinds of knowing looks exchanged by the rest of the family if mother happened to be within hearing range. This happened so regularly and with such seriousness and deliberation that I assumed this was exactly how the whole world reacted to the word.
A record player-changer from the 1960s - not exactly like the one I was given but close enough.
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Around that period someone gave me a small short-wave radio and I spent many a pleasant hour listening to music from neighbouring Italy. On one occasion they played Tito Schipa singing La Cumparsita which they referred to as a tango but which was a lot different from Gade's Jealousie - more rythmic. Next day I asked one of my teachers about what I had heard and was told it was an Argentine tango. To this day I recall the confused look on Mr. Pace's face as he tried to understand why I was whispering and being so secretive.
On my sixteenth birthday, one of my cousins who was seriously into hi-fi, as it was fashionable to call music systems then, bought himself his first component system and gave me my first record player and with it his limited collection of used 78s which by then had given way to the 33.3s. What a wonderful machine! You could stack five records at the top of a spindle and they would drop and play one at a time "automatically"! Magic! The greatest thing anyone had ever given me. Not knowing what evil music the records may contain, mother immediately went to our church and discussed the situation with our Parish Priest. He came to our house and inspected the collection and advised mother that she had nothing to worry about. So I got to keep the collection but within a month I had given away all the records with the exception of one with Carlos Gardel singing Adios Muchachos and A Media Luz.
I am now in my sixties and living a million miles from that village but A Media Luz is still a living link to those days. About a year ago, a thousand questions came to mind when for the first time I read Lenzi's lyrics studiously. I decided I would research them and write a series of observations and conjectures. This is the result of that effort.