Here is the first half of the first chapter (I got full permission from Carlos to post):
I love
music. I enjoy almost all genres and I can hear both a ranchera[1]
from José Alfredo Jiménez and the progressive rock of Coldplay. Classical or
academic music is my bliss and I love some reggaeton[2]
songs. I really like going through the velvety voice of Katie Perry or the
scratched throat of Ana Gabriel, even the youthful choirs of One Direction.
Popular music is something I discovered until I was almost an adult. Growing up
in a Jehovah's Witness home in El Salvador, a small
country in Central America, my musical tastes were always regulated and
controlled by what “The Organization” (which is what Jehovah's Witnesses
affectionately call the headquarters where publications such as the Watchtower
magazine come from), considers appropriate. The interpretation of what was
“right for the Christian ear” was always very broad: music like cumbia[3]
had nothing wrong as long as its lyrics were properly studied and broken down
to eliminate anything that was not within the ideal focused on a life of preaching
and going to meetings Such an examination disqualified authors such as Los
Angeles Azules[4]
or Pastor López, who focus their songs on love betrayals, relationships
at an early age or parties during the holidays.
Rock was
out of the question, just mentioning glam groups like Mötley Crüe or Guns N’
Roses had meant an automatic visit to "the B Room" to receive
"encouragement", a word that in witness language means listening to a
long sermon full of Biblical quotes which ends up almost ordering you to
abandon something you like. The only things that could be heard in my house
were the Spanish melodies of 60’s and 70’s singers, so I grew up listening to Los
Iracundos[5],
Rafael, José Luis Rodríguez, Emmanuel and Camilo Sesto.
What he had
had in abundance were cánticos[6]
(Jehovah’s Witness songs) and dramas on cassette. The cánticos were
the songs that were used at the beginning and the end of the meetings in the Kingdom
Hall. Since we met at least twice a week there, 5 different songs were sung
every week. We were expected to know some by heart and there were certain cánticos
that were crowd pleasers and were reserved for special occasions.
Dramas were
small theatrical plays whose audio was recorded in the headquarters and were
played during the conventions in the stadiums or large auditoriums. In my
youth, two of these dramas were played every year in the District Conventions[7].
One was based in the Biblical world and the other one in the modern era. The
former were always a hit among the young ones, who enjoyed seeing the scenery
and the clothes of the era, as well as the long beards made of cotton.[8]
These small theaters were made very poorly, since it was expected that the
participants finance the scenography and the effects. For a Witness, it was a
complete honor to participate in one of these and be seen by a soccer stadium
with an audience of at least twenty thousand.
Melodies
and dramas, with the exception of two or three of them, always seemed poor to
me, very badly orchestrated and directed, with poor arrangements, better fitted
to a bar song than something that was supposed to be dedicated to God. They’re
not even near to Haendel’s choirs, to the Gregorian songs annotated by Guido in
the middle ages, or the sublime interpretation of life or the Christian vision
that John Milton left in his Paradise Lost. In short, they were artistic
trash.
However,
among the members of the congregation, the songs and the dramas were a hit.
Everyone bought them in large cases that could store twenty cassettes, and it
was not rare for an enthusiastic JW to prefer the vinyl disk with the drawing
of David and the Harp and give the social gatherings a more “theocratic” feel.
I imagine that the sales of those cassettes must have brought large profits to
the JW Organization, since they should have at least sold one or two million
copies of each one. As in my house I did not have the liberty to listen to what
I wanted, I had to listen to my music secretly. I remember there was a radio
with a cassette recorder, it was tiny and could work either connected to the AC
line or with those large “D” size batteries.
Around the
time I hit fifteen years of age, I took advantage of a moment when my parents
were not looking and I took the precious device to my room, which was
strategically placed in the patio. Therefore, I could listen to music in the
afternoons or the evenings, albeit in a very low volume. My favorite station
was the longtime non-existent “Double S”, that broadcasted exclusively Spanish
music from the eighties and nineties. I became a fan of Los Hombres G[9]
and Miguel Mateos, I also liked Timbiriche[10]
a lot, and, I kept this an absolute secret, Las Flans[11].
Then came Luis Miguel and his Romances album, and the goodbye songs of
Cristian Castro. My mother got angry at me because I heard music all locked up,
because she couldn’t control it, and I think that what most got her angry was
my taste for the group Los Ángeles del Infierno[12],
a group with a unique name, to fool her, even though they played a ballad
such as Al otro lado del silencio.[13]
I was so
fond of music, that, once I started middle school, I secretly watched my
school’s band practice, and my biggest dream was to be the one who carried the
largest drum in the Independence Day Parade. The music teacher took a note of
my passion and invited me to form part of the band, but I had to answer him
with the usual “I am a Jehovah’s Witness, and Jehovah doesn’t approve of those
things”.
The teacher
looked at me puzzled by my regurgitated explanation, and asked me, with a
serious tone, when God had prohibited birds from singing. I was speechless
after hearing such crushing logic and decided not to see the band practice,
even though I really wanted to, to avoid further problems.
I tried to
learn how to play the guitar, but it was the same thing, because my teacher
made me practice using rock songs exclusively, and one elder[14]
from our congregation saw me practicing at my teacher’s home’s entrance, and
then went to my parents and “recommended” they have me avoid contact with that
worldly person[15],
from whom I would learn nothing good. During that one week, I only managed to learn
to play the first chords of Patience by Guns N’ Roses.
When I was
sixteen, on a Wednesday night, I exploded. I couldn’t bear it anymore, the
control, and I screamed to my parents for the first time, telling them I would
leave home. My parents’ “smart” solution was to send me on a preaching tour that
weekend near the Guatemalan border. I was frustrated, and, to boot, I had to
ride the whole trip with that same elder, who spent the weekend “encouraging
me”, that is, fucking up my life just a little bit more than what it already
was.
The good
thing about this was that at least the radio was declared, officially, my
possession, and my right to listen to music was always respected, as long as I
did so at a very low volume, so as to not interfere with the sound of the cánticos
which were being played in the living room stereo.
I was very
desperate living inside that theocratic prison. I couldn’t do anything I
enjoyed. Each passing day, the boring routine of a Jehovah’s Witness lifestyle
was more and more unbearable. One Sunday, after the meeting, I went to Farid’s
house, who I considered then to be my “best friend”, and I told him how I felt.
I simply needed to talk and had no desire to debate with my parents or the
elders about anything. He was only 9 months older than me, and we had been
friends since I was nine. We were both baptized Jehovah’s Witnesses and we came
from families who had been in the Organization for decades. I was careful not
to talk about my feelings with him, until that day. I knew by experience that
expressing ideas that were contrary to what we were being taught could bring
great trouble.
Talking
about what I felt was risky, since Farid was a model child that appeared to be
very obedient and prepared for the meetings in a very ostentatious manner,
every meeting, he had his Watchtower magazine all highlighted.[16]
He had been an auxiliary pioneer[17]
many times, spending more than sixty hours a month preaching from house to
house in the streets, and he was also in charge of distributing the monthly
literature to the other Witnesses. Besides, my parents approved of him 100% due
to his loaded language full of “theocratic” expressions such as “If Jehovah
wills”, or “We must obey Jehovah first”.
Farid
calmly listened to me and showed me the underside of his bed. He had a varied
rap music cassette collection. He was very fond of a group called Two Live
Crew, which, as he told me, said a lot of English swear words. I was very
surprised when I found out about it, and he explained, in that positive and
straightforward manner in which he viewed everything, that no one could be a
Witness and be happy at the same time. One had to be very crazy to accept and
comply with everything that was asked for in the Kingdom Hall[18],
and that, deep down, everyone lived their lives the way they wanted to, at
home. He made me swear that, from now on, whatever happened, whether I heard or
saw of something, I would keep silent about it, and he offered to store my
secret music in his “safe”, which was no more than a metal box, of the ones
that carried bullets and which were very common in my country during the war[19],
since you could find them abandoned near the places where there had been a
shootout between the guerrilla[20]
and the soldiers. The box had a lock on it, so he felt that its content was
very secure, and he stored condoms and even a porn magazine that he got from a
neighbor who didn’t ask for it back.
On my way
back home I went by a music store to buy two Maxwell brand chrome cassettes, 90
minutes capacity, so I could record some music. Now I finally had somewhere
safer to store my stuff, because last time, it had been a mess; my mother found
my notebook, filled with poems dedicated to a Jehovah’s Witness girl, and the
whole matter ended up with an elder’s visit to my house, asking if things went
beyond just the paper. I was very ashamed, because the elder also visited the
girl’s home, and she didn’t even knew I liked her, so even to that day, I
blushed when I was near her in the Kingdom Hall.
I had to
choose what I would record. I spent two weeks making very detailed lists; meanwhile,
Farid kept placing the ground rules of our friendship. First things first:
everything had to be a secret. He kept telling me this over and over, and I
accepted without hesitation every one of his recommendations. I found out he
smoked secretly and he had already had sex more than once. He loved watching
porn movies featuring Christy Canyon[21],
he got the tapes from a neighbor who worked in a movie rental store. He had an
old, brown colored VHS machine, and we could watch whatever we wanted in the afternoons,
since his mother would go out preaching and conducting Bible Studies.
Farid’s
preferred way to get away from it all was watching movies. He loved watching
movies of any genre, but his favorite one was action movies. In that, he was
truly an expert. Van Damme, Stallone, Schwarzenegger, the biggest movie stars
at that time, were must-watch, and we saw all of their movies together. We also
enjoyed old Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood movies.
Taking
advantage of the fact that Farid would store my cassettes, I finished my
playlist and decided to store my final recording at his home, in the safety box
he had under his bed.
My playlist
was:
1. Sweet Child of Mine, by Guns N’ Roses
2. Maniac Monday, by The Bangles
3.
Al Otro Lado del Silencio, by Ángeles
del Infierno[22]
4.
Dame la Oportunidad, by Barón Rojo[23]
5.
Como Un Burro Amarrado A La Puerta de Un
Baile, by El Último de la Fila[24]
6. Dr. Feelgood, by Mötley Crüe
7.
Tiraré, by Las Cubas Flans[25]
8. Lambada, by Kaoma
9. Everything I Do, I Do It For You, by Bryan Adams
10. One, by Metallica
[1] A style of Mexican music. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranchera for more details.
[2] A style of music similar to
hip-hop, which originated in Puerto Rico. Typically sung in Spanish. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggaeton for more details.
[3] A style of music that
originated in Colombia. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbia for more details.
[4] “The Blue Angels”, a Mexican
musical group that plays cumbia.
[5] “The Wrathful Ones”, a band
from Uruguay that plays rock in Spanish.
[6] Literally, “songs”, but a
special term. Jehovah’s Witnesses no longer use this term, now they call them
simply “canciones”, “songs”.
[7] Jehovah’s Witnesses split
their organization into congregations, then circuits, then districts, then
zones. Circuit Assemblies involved around 10 congregations. District
Conventions involved possibly dozens or hundreds of congregations.
[8] Jehovah’s Witnesses frown on
male facial hair. See https://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/beards-jehovahs-witnesses.php for more details.
[9] A Spanish pop rock band from
Spain.
[10] A Mexican pop music group.
[11] A Mexican all-female Latin
Pop group.
[12] “The Angels of Hell”, a heavy
metal band from Spain.
[13] “On the Other Side of
Silence”.
[14] That is how Jehovah’s
Witnesses call their Pastors.
[15] Jehovah’s Witness term for
people who have never been Jehovah’s Witnesses.
[16] Jehovah’s Witnesses “study”
the Watchtower magazine every week, where they read a paragraph, and
Witnesses essentially repeat what the paragraph said. Highlighting the answer
is a sign that they read and studied the magazine previous to the meeting.
[17] At the time, it was defined
as a person who preached more than 60 hours a month.
[18] The name Jehovah’s Witnesses
give to their buildings of worship.
[19] El Salvador was in a Civil War from
1980 to 1992.
[20] The left wing insurgents
fighting against the government.
[21] A pornstar who was famous in
the 80’s and 90’s.
[22] “At the Other Side of Silence”, by
“Angels of Hell”
[23] “Give me the Chance”, by “Red
Baron”
[24] “Like a Donkey Tied at the
Door of a Dance”, by “The Last One in the Line”
[25] “I will throw it”, by “The
Flans from Cuba”
