Señora Santana

In this episode, we explore Señora Santana, a song that was sung by the children of Cuban immigrants who had come to work in the cigar factories of Ybor City, Florida in the early 20th century. Our guests are Dr. Benjamin Lapidus, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, and Cuban musical powerhouse Daymé Arocena.

Transcript

LOC Mixtape Episode Transcript, December 2025

“Señora Santana”

[Audio Intro: LOC Mixtape theme sting, “This is LOC Mixtape.”]

Postell (narration): Hi, I’m Postell Pringle. Welcome to LOC Mixtape! My whole career has been nothin’ short of me actin’ a fool – on stage, on camera or on a mic in the music studio. But my real passion – remixing!

C’mon, join me as we dig through the stacks of the largest library in the world to make the ultimate mixtape. The Library of Congress has over 4.3 million audio tracks in its collection. 

I’ve enlisted a few friends to help me find the most astonishing recordings in the library, learning who made them and why. Then – we mix it up! Super talented musicians and songwriters pull up and make stunning new songs inspired by whatever we find in the archives. So…who’s with me?!

Go ‘head, press that record button! 

[Music: Instrumental sting, source clips]

Postell (narration): My mother Deloris grew up in the small but mighty proud City of Sumter, South Carolina. In the same house her father, my Grandaddy Jimmie Lee, grew up in. Back then, every family in the hood had a yard with a fruit tree or a nut tree or both. And Ma’s favorite tree was planted by her Grandma Silvia. A tall pecan tree with long limbs. And she LOVED that tree. Climbing it with her brothers. Harvesting nuts to crack open for snack or gather for Aunt Lucielle to make pie. She especially relished lying at the roots with a good book till she dozed off for a nap. 

One summer, she returned from a few weeks away to find a stump where Grandma Silvia's tree once stood. She ran inside, crying, demanding to know where Grandma’s tree had gone. Her father told her, “Bae, I'm sorry but your tree had to be cut down. It was gonna fall on the house and crush the roof…or worse.” Jimmie Lee tried to console her. Said he’d plant another tree, which he did. But that was no comfort to my mother. Why? Because it wasn’t just any pecan tree. It was her pecan tree. Grandma Silvia’s pecan tree. That new tree was eventually planted. The tree I later climbed and ate pecans from. But for her, those pecans would never taste quite as sweet. 

[Audio: Summer sounds from an urban environment, mariachi strings, voices]

Postell (narration): Picture this – the early 1900s, it’s a hot summer day in Ybor City, a bustling neighborhood in Tampa, Florida, teeming with cigar factories and legions of Cuban, Spanish, Italian, Eastern European, and Jewish immigrants. Ybor, nicknamed Cigar City for obvious reasons, is a riot of colors, sounds, flavors and languages. And kids are everywhere! – playing, singing, working in factories (yes, that’s a whole thing), while growing up in this strange new country. 

[Audio: Sounds shift as the city becomes less busy, a car pulls up slowly]

Postell (narration): Cut to 20 years later. The Great Depression has covered the country like a tidal wave. Folks can’t afford groceries, let alone cigars. Stetson Kennedy, a folklorist, author, and human rights activist, decides to pull up to Cigar City. He’s been hired by the US Government’s new Federal Writer’s Project to capture the stories, songs & traditions of the people of Ybor City. And lady luck is smiling on Stetson when he meets Adelpha Pollato, a young woman who sings him a trunkload of songs she learned as a child immigrant of Cuba, first in Key West, then in her adopted home of Ybor City. Give a listen –

[Music: Primary Source, Señora Santana: 

Señora Santana, porque llora el nino, 

Por una manzana, que se le ha perdido, 

Yo le dare una, yo le dare dos, 

Una para el nino, y otra para vos, 

Yo no quiero una, yo no quiero dos,

Yo quiero la mia, que se me perdio.]

Postell (narration): The song is about a young child who is very sad after losing an apple. But the child doesn’t want a new apple. They want that apple they lost. Pretty straight forward simple song, right? Maybe. But I have a feeling there’s more to this song than we think. 

Stetson recorded dozens of songs with Adelpha, but this one…stuck with me. What might that lost apple have to do with the stories of Cuban people, who left their country for a chance at a better life, working away in the factories of Florida?

So I gave a holla to Dr. Benjamin Lapidus, who knows a little somethin’ about Cuban music – by little, I mean A LOT. He’s an historian and a Grammy nominated musician. Y’know, no big deal (HA). He’s a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY and the Graduate Center. As a scholar, he’s published in depth on Latin music. Who better to talk to me about this enchanting recording and what was happening in Ybor City in 1937.

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning on.]

Postell: Welcome to LOC Mixtape. Really appreciate you being here.

Benjamin: Thanks for having me. It's great to be here with everyone.

Postell: So, who are you, sir?

Benjamin: My name is Ben Lapidus. I am a musician and a musicologist, I guess an ethnomusicologist, but I prefer the term musicologist because all music is ethnic. And I've been a professional musician for close to forty years. 

I live in Brooklyn, New York, and I have been studying music of the Caribbean, Latin America Jazz, New York City formally over thirty years and informally since I've been a kid exposed to it. I teach, I'm a college professor and a professional musician, so if I'm not playing music, I'm talking about music or writing music, or writing about music.

Postell: I would love to know how you actually came to this field of music, this field of study, and you became this sort of music artist.

Benjamin: Yeah. Well. Probably I have to credit my parents and my family. I come from a line of musicians. My grandmother was a musician. She was actually born on Stanton Street in New York, and she sang at Carnegie Hall when she was a kid.

My father was a professional musician. Uh, played throughout New York City in the Catskill Mountain Resorts, played jazz, played Latin music, um, played Italian music, played Klezmer music.

And really, for me, from a young age, was expected myself and my siblings to, to play, music and to study music. And then, you know, just hearing music all the time. My parents constantly exposed me to live music. So I think whether or not I wanted to, or I had a choice, it was just, it seeped in. 

And then I lived in a neighborhood with some phenomenal musicians, uh, particularly one who, uh, was really influential in my life. This guy named Mario Rivera, who played in the Machito band, he played with Tito Puente, played with Dizzy Gillespie, and his sisters heard me singing in my school cafeteria and brought a friend of mine and myself over to his house. He's like, oh, you really wanna play music like this? Okay. And then he showed us kind of what you really had to do, what was expected, if you're gonna be a professional musician, and I would just go to his house and bug him from that day on, you know, until, until he was no longer alive.

Postell: I imagine that, um, having those, those great musicians as mentors is one of the great, one of the ways that you actually started to develop an interest in learning the history and actually, you know, the intellectualizing, the study of it a little bit.

Benjamin: Yeah. And I would say the intellectualizing started at this basic level of like, well, how did you learn this? And who taught you this? And how, and, and how did people talk about this back then? And how do you, how do you get these materials and what's the way that, that you did this?

Postell: Yeah. The stories. The stories. Yeah.

Benjamin: But just like this, just wanting to be around the music and just wanting to know, you know, as much as you can, you know.

Postell: Well speaking of music, let's get into the song that we wanted to talk about which is, um, Señora Santana. And, uh, the version that we are talking about was recorded in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida. Do you mind actually giving us a little bit of context about Ybor City?

Benjamin: Yeah. So, uh, the first thing to know is that it's, it was really a factory town, primarily, uh, this tobacco industry, cigar, anything had to do with cigars and so forth.

And you had a huge amount of, immigration, folks from Spain, folks from Cuba, a lot of Italians from Italy. Being so close to Cuba and having so many Cubans in that area, there was a lot of political activity around the war of Independence.

Postell: Why do you think, folklorists from like the Library of Congress, would've been so interested in covering the music that were coming out of these communities at that time?

Benjamin: When you think about this project. You know, the WPA started this whole thing with the Federal Writers Project, this was really a way for people who were involved in the arts during the depression to, uh, make a living and then to also do something that was of value, which was collecting this, these oral histories, this folklore, these songs, these stories.

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning off.]

Postell (narration): Let’s pause. So, Ben’s talking about the WPA, or the Works Progress Administration. Remember earlier, when I mentioned Stetson Kennedy – the guy who recorded Adelpha singing this song – how he was working for the Federal Writers Project? Well, that was part of the WPA. Millions of Americans were out of work due to the Great Depression, so the government created a program that offered jobs doing all sorts of public works and services, anything from building bridges to creating art. The Federal Writer’s Project put unemployed writers, like Stetson Kennedy, back in the field to use their skills to collect oral histories, write guidebooks, and tons of other projects.

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning on.]

Benjamin: The plus side of, of, of that, um, difficult time period is that, you know, we have this tremendous treasure trove of incredible folklore that's recorded. 

I know they interviewed former slaves, Native Americans, coal miners, and some immigrants, but when this guy, Stetson Kennedy got involved, is when they expanded it to include Latinos, uh, Greeks, Seminole Indians, they were Bahamians and also Anglo-American Floridians. So it seemed like it started with this small group of people and then they expanded it.

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning off.]

Postell (narration): So, check it out – we got 1930’s Ybor City, where there’s a whole lot of somethin’ goin’ on in the streets, factories and communities. We also have a flood of out of work writers and folklorists that the government is paying, sweeping into town to record those Yborians of so-called Cigar City. That’s how we get Adelpha’s wonderful recording. But I had to know more of what Ben thought about the song itself. 

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning on.]

Postell: Well with us bringing this to your attention, what was your first impression of it when you, uh, when you drilled in on it?

Benjamin: Um, my, my impression of it is that, um, it was common. It was something that kids would know because their mothers would sing it to them. 

Benjamin: And the way that it's sung, the melody is, like, it's supposed to be sung in a round. And I think that was one of the things that I thought was interesting about when I heard it. It's being sung by one person.

Postell: Uhhuh.

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning off.]

Postell (narration): HOLD UP! Did ya’ll catch that? Let’s rewind, just a bit. Run back that first thing he said.

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck rewinding, then playing.]

Benjamin: The melody is, is, uh, is like, it's supposed to be sung in a round. 

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning off.]

Postell (narration): If you amazingly somehow never spent a single minute in daycare, singing ‘in a round’ is where multiple singers repeat the same melody, but start at different times. Hmmm. I bet that lil’ tid bit of info will come in handy later…Call it hunch. 

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning on.]

Benjamin: It's like a time travel thing to hear. Here's a kid in 1939 singing this song that she had probably been passed down to her by a couple generations. 

Postell: Yeah. What do you think that, um, do you think that she was cognizant, at least on some level when she was singing the song about how it connected to her community and her experience of migration at the time?

Benjamin: I think on some level, yes, because. What's great too is, she's fluent, she's, she's living in the US you know, she speaks Spanish fluently. She speaks English fluently, and they're asking her, “Can you sing the song?” She's like, “Sure.” And then she sings, she slips into it, like the same way that, you know, we would slip into, you know, “Ms. Mary Mack,” or any song that, you know, you hear when you're a kid growing up here. So it was, it was amazing that it was still in her memory when it was, you know, so long ago. But it's possible that she had siblings or cousins or somebody that their mothers would be singing that song to.

[Music: Primary Source, Señora Santana: 

Yo le dare una, yo le dare dos, 

Una para el nino, y otra para vos, 

Yo no quiero una, yo no quiero dos,

Yo quiero la mia, que se me perdio.]

Postell: So actually, I wanna get, dig a little bit even deeper by going into the actual lyrics right now I'm just going to read the actual English translation, which is:

Señora Santanna, why does the child cry? 

For an apple, which he had lost. 

I will give him one. I will give him two. 

One for the child and the other for you.

And then narratively, the child responds:

I do not want one. I do not want two. 

I want mine that I lost.

There's something very rich to me, it seems about the lyrics of this song and the whole idea of something lost. 

Benjamin: Yeah, well, I guess if you want to talk about, maybe if you wanna talk about loss, I think what the, perhaps the recording shows is that the culture and language are not really lost. Because here's this young woman who can recall this very important part of her childhood hearing this song. 

Postell: Well, does it inspire you hearing it now? Does it inspire you on a musical level?

Benjamin: I can imagine somebody doing some incredible version of this lullaby as has been done with so many fantastic lullabies that come from this tradition and, and I can think of a whole bunch of them, uh, or children's games that people constantly, as a musician, when you play music, people will throw quotes in from lullabies and children's games and so forth.

I remember one time, I, I've been bald for practically 30 years, and I remember one time walking by a group of kids and they started to shout out at me, "Brilla la luna, brilla el sol, brilla la calva, de ese Señor!", Which is, you know, “The sun shines, the moon shines. Look at the big bald head, how it shines. That guy has that big bald head.” And I was laughing to myself. I was kind of psyched to be part of their game.

So I think  these lullabies and games are still relevant. They're very magical. They get the job done in terms of comforting a child, um, get the child to sleep. They're playful. And there are things that we all remember as kids into our adulthood. And then if we have kids, you know, we pass them on. But I think that they are bound to get used and I could totally imagine someone in modern times taking this song and doing something incredible with it. I just find it to be incredible that it's there for every, for everyone to appreciate.

Postell: Well, dude, I find you to be incredible. You are just a deep, deep, well of not only information, but history of culture of understanding – the fact that you actually have can come from it from so many different angles, both as a historian, as a musician, and also just as a human being. It is just, it's astounding and I love talking to you, man.

Benjamin: Well, I really appreciate it. It's been a real pleasure and, uh. I'm eager to hear, uh, what, what you guys come up with in terms of doing some kind of remix of, of Señora Santana

Postell: Word up. Word up. Me too. Me too. You, you and me both. 

[Music: Primary Source, Señora Santana: 

Yo no quiero una, yo no quiero dos,

Yo quiero la mia, que se me perdio.]

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning off.]

Postell (narration): Wow! I was really feeling Ben’s perspective on “Señora Santana.” All that rich, complicated history, both in Cuba and in the United States, that brought Adelpha Pollato, in 1939, to a seat at the table across from Stetson Kennedy. I was beyond hype to hear what a contemporary musical artist would do with this beautiful, simple song. And I had a sick-insane-crazy idea for a collaborator who I knew would sing an ocean of meaning into our musical conversation with Señora Santana. 

Daymé Arocena is an Afro-Cuban jazz and soul singer, composer, arranger, choir director and band leader, born and bred in Havana, Cuba. She’s a Grammy-nominated, Juno Award-winning artist whose talents have fans calling her the next Celia Cruz, THE pinnacle of great Cuban musicians. Classically trained, Daymé is also a master of Afro-Cuban and Caribbean rhythms and melodies. All while brandishing a smile as bright and broad as the sun at dawn. She just might be the next Celia… but she is unmistakably the first Daymé !

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning on.]

[Music: Señora Santana by Daymé Arocena:

No no

Señora Santana

¿Porque llora?]

Postell: Daymé Arocena. Thank you so much for joining us on LOC Mixtape. This is truly an honor and pleasure. I can't tell you how much I have looked forward to this day. 

Daymé : My goodness.

Postell: So, so no pressure. No pressure. So first, can you, can you please tell us who you are?

Daymé : Hello everybody. My name is Daymé Arocena. I'm a singer, song writer, mainly. I'm a choir conductor and that's what my certification says. That's what I studied for nine long years at the, at the music school. Nowadays I combine my knowledge from the music industry and my knowledge from the music in the streets, from my homeland, the music that I studied in the classical conservatory, all of that to craft my, my music. So it's kind of complicated to define musically who I am, but I'm a blend of all of that.

Postell: So first, how did you become a musician? I want to hear a little bit about your background.

Daymé: I feel so lucky because I never had to make a decision about it. That's all I have been doing my whole life. My parents says that I used to come with ideas, with music ideas. I will sing everything around even before pronouncing properly a word, like I would just sing and sing and sing and sing. 

But, then when, when I was like five or six years old, my neighbors started like saying to my family, “You should check on Daymé , because she actually can sing. Like, for real.” (laughs)

On the other hand, I was born in a house that we, we were 14 people in a two bedroom, one bathroom apartment. I was born in 1992, which is, which was the very beginning of one of the biggest crises that the island had. We had no power, electricity, food was really difficult to, I mean, we were living at a really difficult time. And my family, because we would have like two hours or three hours a day of power, no more than that. So they will sing every day all the time. Like my house was always full of people singing and dancing and playing music. 

And, now as a grown woman, I understand that the way Black people heal is actually singing and playing music. It’s probably one of the biggest, it’s part of our strength. We will make music every night without instruments, without freedom, without even the permission to speak our own language. We will create a language like, but we need to sing for real. 

Postell: Preach.

Daymé: We need to play.

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning off.]

Postell (narration): Daymé spoke deeply about her poor but loving and culturally rich upbringing. How growing up with so little brought family and community even closer together. How it made them seek out things that would give them daily joys. Like, music! I gotta say, that resonated with me, personally. Kinda like the peace my moms got seated under her beloved pecan tree. For me, similar to Daymé, music itself was that giving tree where I’d seek shelter growing up. Especially when times felt hard! 

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning on.]

Postell: You play and write in so many different musical styles. I mean, you're like, like a jukebox of genres and from traditional songs to classical, to blues, to jazz, to Afro-Cuban joints. How did you develop a fluency? How'd you get so good in so many different types of music?

Daymé: I don't know. I just don't see music that subdivided. I mean, I don't, I don’t believe in genres. I mean, honestly, uh, music is not a human creation. Genres are human creation. But I, the way I got into music is so, I mean, I don't know, authentic? It's just the way it is. It's just natural. I feel so connected to music in a spiritual way that I don't see, I, I don't see boundaries. So I get emotional listening to Jesse Norman singing Bach or Kathleen Battle singing Mozart. But at the same time, uh, I get so emotional listening to Aretha Franklin or listening to Beyoncé, or listening to Sade, or listening to Celia Cruz or…

Postell: Sade. Sade, you got me with Sade right there immediately.

Daymé: They, all of them have totally different styles, totally different types of voices. Like it's not the same what I get from, uh, Sade than what I get from Nina, that what I get from Billie Holiday, Like the information is different, but it's all beautiful. 

Postell: You play and write in so many different musical styles. I mean, you're like, like a jukebox of genres and from traditional songs to classical, to blues, to jazz, to Afro-Cuban joints. How did you develop, uh, fluency? How'd you get so good in so many different types of music?

Daymé: I don't know. I just don't see music that, that subdivided. I, I mean, I don't, I believe genres. Yeah. I mean, honestly, uh, music is not a human creation. Genres are human creation. 

But I, the way I got into music is so, I mean, I don't know, authentic. It's just the way it is. It's just natural. I feel so connected to music in a spiritual way that I don't see, I, I don't see boundaries. So I get emotional listening to Jesse Norman singing Bach or, um, Kathleen Battle, singing Mozart. Um, but at the same time, uh, I get so emotional listening to AA Franklin or listening to Beyonce, or listening to Sade, or listening to Celia Cruz or…

Postell: Sade, Sade, you got me with Sade right there immediately.

Daymé: They, all of them have totally different styles, totally different types of voices. Like it's not the same. What I get from, uh, Sade than what I get from Nina, that what I get from Billie Holiday, Like the information is different, but it's all beautiful. 

[Music: Señora Santana by Daymé Arocena:

Señora Santana 

¿Porque llora?]

Postell: So, let's get into Señora Santana the song. Let's unpack this for real. First, how did you get inside the song? Which parts of it did you focus on and why from listening to the original.

Daymé: Well, I, first of all, the main inspiration was the, the choir of my school. Uh, when I was a child, we used to sing Señora Santana as a cannon, so (sings in rounds) And it, it works.

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning off.]

Postell (narration): “Hold up! Wait a minute.” Remember earlier, when Ben talked about this song being “sung in a round”? 

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck rewinding, then playing.]

Benjamin: The melody is, is, uh, is like, it's supposed to be sung in a round. And I think that was one of the things that I thought was interesting about when I heard it. It's being sung by one person.

Postell (narration): Clearly, Ben and Daymé knew something about the original song that Daymé wanted to bring back in her version. Let’s hear that again.

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning on.]

[Music: Señora Santana by Daymé Arocena:

Señora Santana 

¿Porque llora?]

Daymé: There are certain melodies that if you start one bar after the same melody, it works, it creates a harmony, like, the first group they start (sings) and then the other one (sings). But when they all sing at the same time, start in, in a different moment. It works as a harmony. So…

Postell: It almost feels like a, I wrote that It almost feels like a cascading, like, like a wave….

Daymé: Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Postell: The sound does that over you as a listener. Yeah.

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning off.]

Postell (narration): So, uh, usually this isn’t what we normally do on LOC Mixtape, but, umm, we are here to mix it up, right? Thus far, I’ve been keeping you in suspense – still there’s something unique about Daymé’s demo that kinda makes me wanna sorta go on ‘head and play you the whole thing now. So…let’s do that!  Shall we?!

[Music: Señora Santana by Daymé Arocena:

No no

Señora Santana 

¿Porque llora?  

Llora por una manzana 

Que se le ha perdido 

Yo le daré una

Que se le ha perdido 

Para el niño y para vos 

Yo quiero la mía 

Que se me perdió]

Postell (narration): Woah! First off, can we collectively agree, those vocals are crazy! But also, it’s really short! Like, punk rock short! Even shorter than Stetson’s recording of Adelpha and that’s barely one minute long. I had to know why Daymé chose to make something so powerfully compact, so, of course, I asked her. And what she said surprised me, for real.

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning on.]

Daymé: I was inspired in TikTok and…

Postell: [Laughs] Really? Really? Come on. Come on. Wait, tell me, please!

Daymé: Like this new way to see, like, we don't have time now. Now, we don't have time. So the, the, the song for example, originally repeats three times. The same verse to say one message. So the message itself is, uh, why the, the, the kid is crying. Uh, the, the kid is crying because he lost his apple. Okay, I give one to the kid and one for you. And the kid says, I don't want your apple. I want mine. That's the message, right? 

So, back in the days, you could communicate that in three minutes. Now you need to communicate that in thirty seconds. Like, you need to move, you need to know how to compress your message, and send it straight away.

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning off.]

Postell (narration): I was fascinated hearing how Daymé arranged her work so it also fit contemporary ways fans are listening to music. Then she broke down why that’s especially important for her as a native Cuban artist.

Daymé: For example now – and this is something about being Cuban – when you leave the island and you move to any other part of the world, mainly, it's like moving sixty years ahead. Like we live in a different, in a different moment of, of times, right?

Postell: Speak on that. Speak on that please.

Daymé : Yeah. Uh, people romanticize socialism and communism and people romanticize like we have old cars from the 60s. But the thing is that, that's the cars we have. It's not because we want, it's because it’s, that's what we got.

Right? So for many Cubans, you can be huge in Cuba, you can be famous in Cuba and nobody knows you. Like nobody has the idea that you exist, because we don't even have platforms in Cuba. We don't have Spotify, Apple Music, anything, right? So we don't have that window for us to see the world and for the world to see at us.

Right? So, when I left the island, I realized that I had to learn how to use social media in a way that I will be seen for more people than just my Cuban crowd. 

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning off.]

Postell (narration): Wow. It’s bonkers how social media’s restrictions forced her to re-imagine the way she delivers this song's beauty and meaning.

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning on.]

Postell: Lyrically, your song tells a very similar story to the traditional one, but you did change and alter some structure of the song. I first wanted to ask you what your thinking was behind some of that, some of the changes you made?

Daymé: Well, the changes I did were all, um, structure changes. I kept the same, exactly the same words, but I changed them in order to say the message faster. Um, and for example. In the original version, you, you'll need to say (sings),

[Music: Primary Source, Señora Santana: 

Señora Santana, porque llora el nino, 

Por una manzana, que se le ha perdido]

Daymé: Right? So the Mm-hmm. next, uh, verse, (sings) “Yo le dare una, yo le dare dos. Una para el nino, y otra para vos.” So now I say, um, I'm, I'm asking like, like: 

[Music: Señora Santana by Daymé Arocena:

Llora por una manzana]

Daymé: I'm, I'm, I'm not doing the whole thing.

Postell: Right.

Daymé: I get the question and the answer, the question and the answer in the same words. So that way, I communicate the message faster.

Postell: So that's amazing. Like to me that what you're speaking to is the art of adaptation. You are taking a classic, a traditional, version of a story and you are finding a way to contextually change it to fit what you are trying to say and what makes sense for not just your audience, but for you in particular as an artist.

And one of the things, when I listened to the traditional song, there are three characters. There's Señora Santana who speaks on behalf of the child. There's a person who's offering the new apples to replace the lost apples. And then the child themselves comes on and speaks.

But in your version, it almost feels like there's two main characters, Señora Santana and then there's also the person who's offering the apples. And then, next to that, the layering of your beautiful harmonic vocals, what it evoked in me was the idea that this was Señora Santana's community or her family, or her ancestors speaking up for her, kind of like backing her up. 

Daymé: In certain points, you're right. The way I approach the arrangement was like Señora Santana and the kid, they always speak by themselves. 

Postell: Mm.

Daymé: But the community is who is asking, always it's always the choir asking when, when she's answering or the kid is answering. It's only one voice. So it's not one person that wants to give you an apple. It's the community supporting you and asking, “How can I help?”

[Music: Señora Santana by Daymé Arocena:

Que se le ha perdido 

Yo le daré una

Que se le ha perdido 

Para el niño y para vos]

Daymé: So it's like, in my point of view it’s like this woman with a child in any difficult situation that she feels and that, that she gets the  support of the community first. Asking her how to help her, how to help, um, to sort out the situation that she's in.

Postell: So that also makes me wanna ask you to discuss the sense of longing for the characters in the song there. To me, there's a sense of longing for, for something that was left behind in both your version and the traditional version.

And that could be many things, but it seems to me that it's very connected with Cuban history and Cuban culture. Um, that could be home tradition, family, community, food, music, what it is to be Cuban. Did that factor into your, into your thinking of the song?

Daymé: The song itself is, is so interesting because it feels like – the way I feel it is, like someone needs and then, people wanting to help.

Postell: Hmm.

Daymé: And it's interesting because sometimes, for example, sometimes people don't wanna be helped, sometimes people just wanna resolve their problems themselves. The kid is saying, “I don't want, I, I don't want you to help me. I want what I lost.” So sometimes you need to leave people to resolve their problems, to become adults, to become stronger, to be able to fight the war, to fight life to live better. 

Postell: I would go so far as to also say we have to listen when other people are telling us what they want. 'cause that's also to me, one of the things that's within your song.

Daymé: Yes.

Postell: The, yeah. the child. is saying, I want the thing that I lost. Listen to that. This is the thing that I want. Let me get that. Don't give me all…

Daymé: Let me get it.

Postell: Yeah. Let me get it.

Daymé: Don't, don't ask these other ladies. Like, when I hear the original song, I can hear a mother and many other women trying to help the child, to help him and and the most beautiful thing is the end of the song. 

Postell: Yeah.

Daymé: There is no more comments after that. It not, “Oh, but let me help you again.” No. It's like, “No, don't help me solve it.”

Postell: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's lost this, that's what I want. The thing that's lost.

Daymé: That's what I want.

Postell: Yes.

Daymé: That's the way it is.

Postell: Yeah. Oh, man. I, well, I am just so happy and I think we're all so fortunate that you produce so much like beautiful love in the world through your artistry, through your story, through your teachings. I'm just saying, I'm just saying you, you're producing, you're producing the beauty in the world that we need to see right now. And I cannot thank you enough. I cannot thank you enough.

Daymé: No, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I feel so honored to be asked to make that version first. That was a lot fun. And I believe that the only way to – I mean, I always say that our body, our physical being and existence has an expiration date. What, but what is gonna stay is music. This body is not going to stay for centuries, yeah…

Postell: Exactly But, but your voice might. But your voice will stick around.

Daymé: But my music might. My music might. So I take really care. A lot of care of it. Yeah. 

Postell: Thank you so, so much. I really appreciate you. 

Daymé: So thank you guys. Thank you. It is, it's an honor. Honestly, it's an honor to be here. 

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning off.]

Postell (narration): Speaking of honor, I’ll let Daymé do the honors in introducing her beautiful contribution to our mixtape – 

Daymé : Hello everybody. This is Daymé Arocena, and you are gonna listen to my version of Señora Santana.

[Music: Señora Santana by Daymé Arocena:

No no

Señora Santana 

¿Porque llora?  

Llora por una manzana 

Que se le ha perdido 

Yo le daré una

Que se le ha perdido 

Para el niño y para vos 

Yo quiero la mía 

Que se me perdió]

Postell (narration): Believe me when I say, the honor of choppin’ it up with Daymé about her incredible music and her homeland of Cuba was all ours. If you haven’t already, go and listen to her now, on repeat! Thanks again to Dr. Benjamin Lapidus for sharing his deep well of knowledge about Cuba, its music and this song. Need I remind you, Ben is also a Grammy-nominated musician making astonishingly dope music. Get on that! And thanks to Adelpha Pollata for sharing this gem of her heritage with all of us for centuries to come. 

Lastly, thanks to you guys for the honor and pleasure of making our mixtape together. Let’s run it back soon, huh? Whatyasay?! Remember, there’s literally millions of audio tracks just waiting, practically begging to be discovered and inspire you at loc.gov. Check it out. See where it takes you. ¡Está bien! Hasta luego, todos. Press that stop button en tres…dos…uno…

[Audio: Sounds of a tape deck turning off.]

[Music: Instrumental]

Credits: 

The Library of Congress Mixtape was produced by audiyo-yo, FableVision Studios. Created and Executive Produced by Anne Richards and Postell Pringle.

Produced by Snow Xue Dong. With Production Support from Ash Beecher and Kaz Long. Hosted by Postell Pringle. Sound Design and Voice Recording by Dan Walsh. Additional Music by Postell Pringle. Content and Curriculum Advisor, Carolyn Bennett.

Thanks to our guests, Ben Lapidus and Daymé Arocena.

Funded by a grant from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program, through the Lewis-Houghton Initiative. Content created and featured in partnership with the TPS program does not indicate an endorsement by the Library of Congress. Visit the Library of Congress at loc.gov.