Survival songs : Conchita Piquer's coplas and Franco's regime of terror / Stephanie Sieburth.
| Author/creator | Sieburth, Stephanie |
| Format | Book |
| Publication Info | Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, ©2014. |
| Description | xiii, 257 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Subjects |
| Series | Toronto Iberic Toronto Iberic ; 9. ^A1121613 |
| Contents | Camouflage: the psychology of survival in Franco's Spain -- An introduction to the Copla and its star performer -- Copying with terror through popular music: "La parrala" ("The wine lady") -- Paradise lost: "Ojos verdes" ("Green eyes") as ritual of separation -- "Tatuaje" ("Tattoo"), the unburied dead, and complicated grief -- The "other woman": "romance de la otra" as ritual of marginalization and disenfranchised grief -- Reasserting personhood through popular song: "Romance de valentía" ("Ballad of bravery") and "La ruiseñora" ("The nightingale") -- When a radio song is the meaning of life: mending the torn fabric of identity through narrative, music, and interpretation. |
| Abstract | How can a song help the hungry and persecuted to survive? This book explores how a genre of Spanish popular music, the copla, as sung by legendary performer Conchita Piquer, helped Republican sympathizers to survive the Franco regime's dehumanizing treatment following the Spanish Civil War (1936?39). Piquer's coplas were sad, bitter stories of fallen women, but they offered a way for the defeated to cope with chronic terror, grief, and trauma in the years known as the "time of silence." Drawing on the observations of clinical psychotherapy, the author explores the way in which listening to Piquer's coplas enabled persecuted, ostracized citizens to subconsciously use music, role-play, ritual, and narrative to mourn safely and without fear of repercussion from the repressive state. An interdisciplinary study that includes close readings of six of Piquer's most famous coplas, this book will be of interest to specialists in modern Spanish studies and to clinical psychologists, musicologists, and those with an interest in issues of trauma, memory, and human rights. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-242) and index. |
| Language | Includes some song lyrics, in Spanish and English. |
| Awards note | Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize, 2014. |
| LCCN | 2007499389 |
| ISBN | 9781442644731 |
| ISBN | 1442644737 |