The lyrics of the jota “When you were single you told me / early pink love / and ‘ahura’ from ‘casaus me dices / get away from there, marrana’ have been transformed into “I look at you and you look at me / and our lips are silent / If a love is impossible / it is the eyes that speak”, thanks to the work of the singer and jota teacher Toño Julve, who has updated the lyrics of many of these Aragonese couplets with a feminist vision.
Although it may seem difficult to believe, these two lyrics are now the same jota as they are composed on the same melody, before and after passing through Julve’s hands.
Another example of before and after: “If you want to see my girlfriend / with a red face / all you have to do is ‘fit her’ / a ‘great’ couple of ‘slaps’” now says “She carries our jota inside / feelings and longings / songs that go into the air / sighs that are words.”
Toño Julve has long been carrying out the task of collecting and creating new Aragonese couplets and songs in his project, called ‘Tradinnovación, Viejas Jotas, Nuevas Coplas’, a proposal aimed at the reformulation of old Aragonese popular songs. And it is in this research work, which began during the pandemic, where Julve has found some letters of jacks that he describes as “infamous” and that “do not correspond to our days”, although he specifies that the proportion of jacks with letters that contain sexist overtones is small and many of them are no longer sung.
Julve does not want to banish the so-called ‘jotas de picadillo’, as he is quick to explain in an interview with EFE, since some of them “have their charm, as long as there is no lack of respect.”
The ‘jotas de picadillo’ date back to the 18th century, when the waiters went out to hang around and there were fights between friends, which became more heated. Another version is the one that has as its protagonists a man and a woman who threw improvised ‘freaks’ at each other in a kind of ‘cockfight’.
That the messages transmitted by the jotas are egalitarian
One that does lack respect is the one that Julve himself paraphrases during the conversation and that says: “The sun said to the moon / retreat, bandit / the woman who walks at night / cannot be a good thing.” It is, according to the jotero from Huesca, an initiative that seeks to propose alternative jota (coplas) lyrics so that groups that wish to use them can use them, with the intention of maintaining old and different styles and even disseminating them even more.
In short, a way for the messages transmitted by the jotas to be egalitarian and far from couplets that stereotype gender roles, or that even send sexist and pejorative messages. And in this way move beyond certain lyrics that may be uncomfortable for singers, inappropriate and even reprehensible for women, but which are not intended to replace the traditional.
Something that Beatriz Redón, deputy for Equality of the Provincial Council of Teruel, agrees with, an institution that has organized two talks-recitals this weekend in which Julve will explain the different styles and tunes with a study of their melodies and the different couplets that have been applied throughout history to each of these melodies. They are the “Jota Couples for Equality”, where each new couplet created specifically for each melody analyzed will be shown. They will be held this Saturday at 6:00 p.m. in Teruel and on Sunday at 12:00 p.m. in Calanda (Teruel).
In statements to EFE, the person in charge of Equality explained that the objective is to give these couplets a twist, to convey other types of messages, to unite the cultural heritage, “of which we are tremendously proud”, with a much more positive and egalitarian message. , which helps to sow real and effective equality between men and women.
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