My first opportunity to travel around Europe came in the spring of 1991 during a break between semesters at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg. Later, one of my standing jokes was that in every city I went to, I passed an Andean band playing the "Lambada" on a street corner. (In fact, that's not quite true; in some cities I passed a couple of them.)
What made this joke so amusing to me is that I couldn't think of a less "authentic" tune for a group of "traditional" musicians to play than one that owed its popularity to the conscious attempts of a French producer to create an international dance craze by means of a pop band he assembled and promoted. Turns out that the joke was on me, since the song in question was actually an unauthorised translation of the Bolivian hit "Llorando se fue", which incorporates Andean folk melodies. Here it is from the men in ponchos who first made it famous, Los K'jarkas:
I confess, part of me is relieved to discover this, since I'd always reproached myself a bit for enjoying something so cheesy and faddish. You'd think by this point I'd long since moved beyond such hopelessly pre-postmodern concepts as "authenticity"--
particularly in the realm of popular music--but what can I say except that old prejudices die hard?
