By José Gandue @spinning zone
The digital platform Netflix A couple of weeks ago, he launched a dramatic series (with exquisite moments of dark and everyday humor) that tells what happened with the Lockheed L-188 Electra aircraft of the Medellín Aeronautical Society (known as SAM) on May 30, 1973. The aircraft was seized while flying from Alfonso Bonilla Aragón Airport in Cali to Enrique Olaya Herrera Airport in Medellín, with a stop at Matecaña International Airport in Pereira. From there, in the real story, More than 60 hours passed and the aircraft traveled more than 22,000 km, making multiple stops along the way, and finally landing at Ezeiza Airport in Buenos Aires. The only thing we will say about the audiovisual production, Starring Mónica Lopera, Cristian Tappan, Ángela Cano and Enrique Carriazo (among others), is that It is one of the best productions we have seen in recent times in Colombia, But we'll leave the review itself to the experts, recommending you pay attention to what our friend Manuel Estevez, director of the Sono Magazine, who will surely write a good article about it. Our story, naturally, focuses more on the music side.
From the very first moment, the soundtrack of Hijacking of Flight 601, provides conclusive proof from the excellent curatorship of Nicolás Beltrán and Santiago Uribe, Those who knew how to select, from all the music that was playing in Latin America at that time, the recordings most suitable to recreate the right atmosphere for the whole story. Right from the start, it's fantastic to begin the whole story with the version by the immeasurable Palito Ortega of The House of the Rising Sun, a North American folk song whose origin dates back to the beginning of the 20th century, and whose most internationally known interpretations They are the ones by the British group The Animals, from 1964, which reached number one in sales in the United States and the United Kingdom, and Joan Baez's, of 1959-60.
The soundtrack includes twenty-eight tracks, ranging from rock to the romantic ballad of the moment, Adding to that the salsa tunes, constant hits in the discos of that time, the occasional musical drama typical of the era, memorable boleros and, as a curious detail, the orchestrated performance by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra of Also sprach Zarathustra, by Richard Strauss, which the vast majority of you should know and relate to Odyssey 2001, ...the film Stanley Kubrick made in 1968. I'll give you a little preview and tell you that, in the final scenes, everything culminates with Sui Generis and his Song for Death.
After listening to this compilation, amidst laughter, fond memories of my childhood home, and a sense of gratitude, one can feel... by figures such as Eddie Palmieri, Nicola Di Bari, Beny Moré, Juan Gabriel And with other renowned artists featured in this piece, I started thinking about several things, which are really worth mentioning:
On the one hand, this is one of the occasions when One must recognize the changing times and realize that it is only thanks to digital platforms, both those of visual material and those of sound archives, This project was made possible and massive access can be given to both the history and the music of this production. I don't think it's a profitable business for any record label at this point to release the compilation and expect significant sales. Now it's simply a matter of putting together a good playlist, period. That sounds very obvious, but the existence of these possibilities gives new generations the opportunity to appreciate the Hispanic American sound. of a decade where there was a remarkable sonic explosion that, in the memory of many, seems lost, compared to the continuous presence of Anglo-Saxon music of that time. The recovery of record productions from fifty years ago in this type of cultural work does justice to the importance of those moments, correcting conceptual errors with fatal and dismissive labels such as «"music for ironing"» y «"popular sentimentality"».
On the other hand, these kinds of series and films made in this region demonstrate, once again, that not everything in these territories has to be a soap opera, and that, with professionalism and innovative stories, it is possible to create interest in both local and foreign audiences. (according to what they say, Hijacking of Flight 601 It is currently one of the most-watched non-English language productions on Netflix. And incidentally, through the music, to be able to tell our story, the story of our parents and other past generations. I'm not going to tell you that I'm now a fan of Sabú, El Dúo Dinámico, or Los Moonlights, but every era has its own soundtrack, and if we tell what's happening to us and what happened to us in this way, the audience will learn something more about our identity, which deserves to be widely known throughout the world.
