El ocho de abril/April 8th

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Photo from billboard.com Click HERE. 
¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Joan Sebastian (José Manuel Figueroa)! (1951-2015)

A Mexican singer who won four Grammys and seven Latin Grammys, Sebastian was born in Juliantla, a small town in Guerrero, Mexico. As he told the New York Times in this excellent 2012 profile (click HERE), his father bought him a transistor radio when we was a child and he listened to country stations from as far away as Nashville. He began writing music when he was 11. At 14, he entered the seminary to study to become a priest, but he fell in love with a girl who often visited her brother, and at 17 he left to follow his heart, and to write his music. He moved to Chicago and worked as a dishwasher and a used cars salesman for a while, but he always believed that he would do something special with his life, and he always played his music. He gained a following in the 80s and became especially popular when he started riding his horses on stage to begin a concert a few years later (see his L.A. Times obituary, HERE). He fell in love many times and had 8 children with five different women (all of whom are represented with 13 hearts on his guitar). Two of his sons were killed in separate gunfire incidents. In addition to the loss of his sons, Sebastian faced the struggles of poverty when he was younger and poor health (bone cancer, which would ultimately be the cause of his death) in his later years. Nonetheless, he told the Chicago Sun Times in 2010, "I'm singing and I'm healthy. I have a lot of dreams. I have this love for life ... Let's live, let's be happy." In 2012, he recorded a song with will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, who was a fan (the song, Hey You, was an upbeat club mix). That year he also completed a 15-stop concert tour around the United States, his last. See his video for Diséñame HERE ("Yo sé que no soy el hombre que soñaste ... Diséñame ...), and hear him speak about his mother saying that she had hung a swing from the stars as a child before singing a song in honor of her HERE.

For a lesson centered on Joan Sebastian's song Celia (El imperfecto/Los sueños/La niñez), click HERE.


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