Masayo -- ¿Quién Sera? (Sway)

 

I've often referred to my backlog of songs...songs that I've discovered on YouTube and marked as a Favourite tune to be written about at a future date. Well, that list has grown months-long so it's been the case that some of those more temporally distant ones have been somewhat forgotten to me. 

However, I've been determined to get back to those early songs and give them another listen. One such song is the spicy "¿Quién Sera?" as sung by Latin singer Masayo as the title track for her second album which was released in 2007. It sounds so danceable that it might even induce ME onto the floor but that's all I will say lest I unintentionally induce some nightmarish images into your head. It took a bit of doing but I was able to track down Masayo's website where I learned that she went to Cuba by herself in 2000 to learn the basics of the music from that nation under the tutelage of percussionist Óscar Valdez (nope, neither the boxer nor the soccer player). In 2001, she was able to release her first album recorded in Cuba.

From what I've read on the song's article on Wikipedia, "¿Quién Sera?" was originally recorded in 1953, created by Mexican songwriters Luis Demetrio and Pablo Beltrán Ruiz as a bolero-mambo instrumental with lyrics added the following year for Pedro Infante to sing.

While I was listening to "¿Quién Sera?", I was wondering why the song sounded so familiar. Easy to answer since not long following Infante's version, American lyricist Normal Gimbel tore out the original melancholy lyrics of a man being all lovelorn. In their place, he added the words of a fellow falling for his dancing partner for her ability to sway and swivel, and thus, the song was renamed "Sway" with Dean Martin recording this English-language cover in 1954 as well. Although I don't remember whether Dino's was the first version that I had ever heard, I have heard "Sway" over the decades and the most recent take was by Canadian jazz cat Michael Bublé.