El veinte de enero/January 20th

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¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Juan García Esquivel! (1918-2002)

Photo from discogs.com
Click HERE
A self-taught bandleader, pianist, and composer from Mexico, Esquivel is known for his inventive "space age" arrangements from the 1950s and 60s, which enjoyed a revival in the 90s after the release of Space Age Bachelor Pad Music, a compilation of his hits. His music was featured in several movies, including 1998's The Big Lebowksi, and many advertising jingles. After living in the United States for many years, Esquivel returned to Mexico in 1979, where he wrote songs for the children's show Burbujas (click HERE to be amazed). He was married six times, the last time when he was 84 to his much younger health care aide, Carin Osorio. As he once told The Wire magazine, "I have had many loves in my life: music, cars, women, and the piano, not necessarily in that order." A film about Esquivel's life starring John Leguizamo was announced in 1998 but never produced or released. Equivel's 2002 New York Time's obituary also mentioned that the film was in development (as did The Independent's obituary, which goes more into his childhood in Mexico City - click HERE to read).

Click HERE to listen to Esquivel's song Mucha muchacha.

For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE.

Other January 20th birthdays:

Photo from Mexican paper La razón.
Click HERE
Ernesto Cardenal (1925-        ). Nicaraguan poet, politician, and former Catholic priest. Cardenal was born into a wealthy family in Managua, Nicaragua, came to support the Sandinistas, and participated in the 1954 "April Revolution" against Anastasio Somoza García, which did not succeed. Many of his contemporaries were killed, and Cardenal left Nicaragua for a monastery in the U.S. (The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, in Kentucky, where Thomas Merton also studied at the time). He was ordained in 1965 and founded an art community in the Solentiname Islands, where he lived for some ten years. He was the Minister of Culture in the Sandinista government from 1979-1987. In 1984 he was defrocked by the Vatican for refusing to step down from this position (read more HERE).  Eventually, Cardenal came to condemn the Sandinista government for becoming a dictatorship. In 2005 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and he has won various other international awards for his poetry.

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