Switched on Pop - Modern Classics: Carina del Valle Schorske on Cat Power's "Manhattan"

Episode Date: August 31, 2021

Recently the hosts of Switched on Pop kept seeing the same byline next to their favorite pieces of music writing. A moving profile of Bad Bunny? There was the name. A searing critique of West Side Story? There it was again. An elegy on love, loss, and an Aretha Franklin and Smokey Robinson duet? By now it was committed to memory: writer and translator Carina del Valle Schorske. So we knew we had to invite Carina to participate in our Modern Classics series and learn what this brilliant writer would place in her modern pop pantheon.  Carina’s pick, the 2012 song “Manhattan” by Cat Power, presents an opportunity to analyze an artist we’ve never discussed on the show before, and a song that sparks associations with New York City’s rich musical history. Cat Power, aka Chan Marshall, released “Manhattan” on her 2012 album Sun, and the song—on which Marshall recorded every instrument herself—has become an unlikely sleeper hit in the Cat Power catalog. Perhaps that’s because, as Carina tells it, the song is a celebration and elegy at once, trying to capture the beat of a city that is constantly in flux, but with an inescapable iconicity.  “Manhattan” isn’t the only piece of urban musical alchemy Carina brought to the show. Cat Power’s ode to the borough syncs up in surprising ways with the 1978 salsa track by Willie Colón and Rubén Blades, “Buscando Guayaba.” Together, the songs stake out a twisting path across genre, time, and language, but along on the same streets. Songs Discussed Cat Power - Manhattan Rubén Blades and Willie Colón - Buscando Guayaba, Pedro Navaja Ella Fitzgerald - Manhattan Stevie Wonder - Livin’ for the City Alicia Keys and Jay Z - Empire State of Mind Check out Carina’s profile of Bad Bunny, her essay on Aretha Franklin and Smokey Robinson, and more writing at her website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater. We've just launched the new-ish and way better Eater app. It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are, and serves up smarter search results just for you. You can find my list of the best places for martinis and fries in New York City. And save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. the Eater app at Eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm musicologist

Nate Sloan, and this is the latest installment of modern classics, where we talk to our favorite musicians and writers about the songs that they think belong in the pantheon of pop. Our guest today is someone I've wanted to speak to since I started seeing their byline attached to all of the best music writing of the last few years. A profile of Bad Bunny. There they were, a searing, critique, of West Side Story. There they were again, a beautiful introduction to the Bay Area musician Ladonia. There it was again. I'm pleased to welcome the person responsible for all of these pieces and more, the writer and translator, Karina del Valle Shorski. Karina, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. You nailed it on the pronunciation too. Amazing. Yes, I may have practiced

a dozen times. May have not. We'll never know. Multilingual musicality. Thank you. Karina, what song have you brought for us today? Well, the song that I selected today is that Cat Power is Manhattan. Let's listen to some of Manhattan by Cat Power right now. Cat Power, aka Sean Marshall, released her first album in 1995 and her most recent in 2018. This song, Manhattan, is from her 2012 album, son on which she plays virtually every instrument we're hearing herself. Karina, do you remember when you first heard this song?

It's so embarrassing and I knew that I would have to tell the truth on this podcast that the fucking Spotify algorithm fed it to me. No shame in the Spotify algorithm game. I did listen to a decent amount of cat power, but I definitely heard it for the first time during my early years of living in Manhattan as an adult. I grew up in the Bay Area, but my mom grew up in Manhattan and in Washington Heights specifically. And my family lived there in Washington Heights in the same apartment for 65 years until December when my grandmother passed away. So coming to live in Manhattan, I guess, seven years ago or so to do a PhD at Columbia, like adjacent to the

neighborhood. That was like my family's neighborhood. Setting up shop in my studio apartment and admitting to myself that I wanted to be a writer and that I wanted to try that in New York was the period in which I was introduced by the Spotify algorithm to this song. And it was an immediate hit with me. So I love that kismet. I mean, Spotify recommends us a lot of songs, but maybe not all of them connect in so kind of perfect a way. Were there any... particular lyrics that really resonated with you? Yes. I mean, I actually wondered, you know, what counts as pop or switched on pop.

And I think that this is probably like, you know, on the indie side of pop. But to me, it still counts. To me, almost every song about New York is a pop song. And like, including jazz, because it's engaging with this iconic popular symbol, not only for the U.S. but for the entire world. And so you're always going to be participating a little bit, even by saying the word Manhattan in that kind of conversation, I think.

But other than that, the lyrics of this song are like as non-pop song as you can get in some ways. The chorus is, Don't look at the moon tonight. You'll never be Manhattan. Which is almost like a haiku. or something. You know, it's like an urban anti-hikou.

But this idea that like when we move to the city, the thing that we're desiring to be is like the city itself. And that's the thing like you can never be because you're only one person. And the city is the collective. Yeah. Do you hear this as a song that is a love letter to Manhattan or is it hate mail? Like what do we make of Cat Power's relationship to the city and this? song.

Do I think it's a love letter? Do I think it's hate mail? I don't believe in the separation between those affects. And I think that this song is about the ambivalent attachment to Manhattan. It's about the love and the hate. The first repeated lyric is all the friends that we used to know ain't coming back and coming back. And I think that you know, it's a truism about the city.

And it's about urban spaces in general, but like New York only more so. So at first it feels kind of neutral, but I feel the song keeps deepening, the like loss associated with those lines and the kind of impervious cruelty of the city. And then it makes me start thinking about, like, why are the friends that we used to know

are not coming back? It's because, like, they're forced out by capitalism or are rich, so they leave. Right. So right away, I guess, I'm thinking about the livability of Manhattan, why there's so much personal loss in Manhattan, how rare it is to be able to stay.

And I think, obviously, it's connecting with my own thoughts and experiences about the city, but I think that the song sustains it. I was doing a little research for the podcast about, if she's ever spoken about the circumstances around her writing it, because I know it's a fave, like Cat Power fans love Manhattan, partly because it has this kind of uplifting major notes or whatever.

You know, you're the musicologist, but it's like, it seems like it's not in a minor key. It seems like it's in a major key as far as I can tell. Totally. You know, so it has a little bit of an anthemic quality even as it's this sad. But anyway, when I was looking into her writing it, she was talking about coming back to live in Manhattan again after some years away and experiencing how much the city had changed and how many, people had been forced out and that she was still grinding as she is to this day, like as an indie musician, what happens when you're not a real pop pop pop musician? And also real pop pop pop musicians fall on hard times, like more often than not.

Yeah, it's interesting to learn a little bit about Cap Power's relationship to this song because I think you're right. I think you have an astute observation about the tonality of this song, this major key, and if we think about the ways that the music might reinforce the ambiguity in terms of the lyrics, there's some choices here that are really striking. And, you know, one of them is to start the song with this very kind of stark palette. We have basically, I think, two instruments. just a piano and an electronic drumbeat.

Part of the reason this song is so versatile emotionally for me in the sense that there's pretty much any time I could be in the mood to listen to it is partly because it has this kind of this rhythmic propulsiveness or groove that I find really engaging. And I often find that when I closely listen to rhythms that attract, me in that way that they have some little syncopated Latin element. In the case of this song, I don't know if it's a woodblock or if it's like the instrument that they actually called glavis, but I feel like there's a little clave groove happening behind the main electronic

drum beat, you know? Yeah. You accurately, I think, describe this as a song that doesn't display a lot of like capital P pop tendencies. But there are a few moments that really stick out for me as using a lot of the tricks that I've encountered listening to Top 40 Pop over the last five years. And one of them is something called text painting where the music illustrates what is happening in the lyrics. And this happens a few times on this line

when Cat Power sings, see your heart has a rhythm. Oh, yes. Like, that is sublime. The heart has a rhythm, and then we actually get this additional rhythm. But then there's maybe another moment of duality, I guess, in this music. Because when we get to the chorus of the song, something really kind of heart-stopping happens, which is that Cat Power, interesting.

introduces a live drum set in addition to this electronic drum groove. I mean, it doesn't get any better than that. Yeah, well, I had never noticed that. And it's absolutely that excitement when the other drum kit rolls up. It comes up with a little roll. And it gives the whole chorus of this incredibly kind of euphoric boost. But what you're saying about how one drum kit is electronic and the other one is organic, shall we say live.

Also, for me, feels so much like what the city feels like. On the one hand, it has this, like, really tendency towards, like, corporate uniformity. Every block is a Chase Bank or a Shake shack or especially

in Manhattan, especially Manhattan. But at the same time, it feels like there's no subduing the, like, organic energy surging through that human beings are bringing to the space. but then also that this is a city that like where both those musical forms like experiments with electronic music and also like the inner sanctum of live music overlap and that also has a little bit of a New York feeling. We could put this song into a lineage of songs about Manhattan from 1925's Manhattan composed by Rogers and

Heart and performed by Ele Fitzgerald, which sort of celebrates the expansiveness and diversity of this modern metropolis. We'll have Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, too. It's lovely going through. To Stevie Wonder's 1970s song Living for the City, which really captures the economic hard times that a lot of urban areas were experiencing in America. To 2009

and Jay-Z and Alicia Keys Empire State of Mind, which maybe captures the sort of capitalistic quote-unquote revitalization of many American cities. But I guess the question is for whom were they revised?

vitalize. So how might Manhattan capture something about the city in this moment of 2012 and perhaps even the moment we're speaking right now in 2021? Such a good question. And it is a very rich lineage. And I actually, like, I also do see the song as continuous with those songs. Like, I hadn't listened to the Ella Fitzgerald's version of Manhattan in a while, and I had really thought of it as a confection. I'd never really focused on the lyrics, just more the list of place names and stuff. But when I listened to it recently, I realized it's literally about being too poor to go to the country in the summers. Summer journeys to Niagara and two other places aggravate all our cares. We'll save our fans.

It is about still being in New York when all your friends went to the country house, or maybe not your friends, maybe some just other people that you don't even know, went to their country houses and you're singing a little song to yourself about making the best of it, although we all know that New York in the summer, the city is the place to be. Amen. Contrast that to Empire State of Mind where you audibly groaned. What doesn't that capture about the vitality of? of New York for you?

First of all, it's ironic that, like, of the songs you listed, the Ella Fitzgerald Stevie Wonder and Jay-Z Alicia Keys song, like they're the only ones who are native New Yorkers. That's true, isn't it? Yet, both of them, I think, participate in a song that is definitely a, feels part and parcel of the, like, corporateization, like, Tribecaization of New York City. I mean, Tribeca is cited in the song.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I'm up at Brooklyn. Now I'm down and tributtization. But for me, what really doesn't work about the song is the lack of tension between the lyrics and the music and the lack of a sense of tension in general in the song. It just has this super, like, anthemic melody and chorus and stuff. And, like, even though it's, I guess, like, slightly minor the way Alicia Keys sings, they'll make you real brand new. These lights will inspire you.

there's not enough spin on that. There's not enough ironic spin to make it emotionally believable. And then of course, like it's a time when it's a little hard to listen to Jay-Z

like rehash the stories of his youth when he's like already written about New York in like such iconic and indelible ways to then cheapen those same narratives like with this song

like feels like who's gonna fuck with that really you know, Jay Z has made many contributions to New York narratives. New York state of mind is not one of them. Cat Power song is nowhere near like the level of kind of direct and searing social commentary that living for the city is. But it shares more with that song in terms of its groove, I think, than the others.

Karina, I think you've made a persuasive case for, adding cat powers Manhattan to our modern canon. Let's take a quick break. And when we come back, I want to listen to another song that you've brought us that has a deeper history of New York contained within it and some other stories that maybe haven't made it into the other classic Manhattan songs we've listened to. Klein, the new collection elixir. Three new elixires perfume intense. Solar.

Magnetic. Ball. Pulsa in the banner. Make the quiz. And discover your fragrance euphoria. Karina, in addition to Kat Powers, Manhattan, you've brought us another song today. And it's Buscando Guayaba by Willie Colon and Rubin Blades recorded in 1978.

God, that's fun. Marina, why did you bring us this song? The reason that I connected it with the Cat Power song was because I recently learned that this song is about New York in a way that I couldn't discern on my own, even though it's there a little bit clearly, if you listen closely, in the first couplet of the song. I'm going to palmonte,

Bustcando Guayava, for La Vereda of El Ocho and the Doz. And for our non-Spanish-speaking listeners, that's, I went into the wilderness looking for guavas on the path of the eight and the two. There's an obvious reason why I didn't think of this as an urban song. It's called Buscando Guayava, and it uses this metaphor of looking for the sweetest guavas in the countryside

that is a metaphorical vocabulary that's very, like, rich in Latin America. Like, if U.S. pop songs are about candy, Latin American pop songs are about fruit. But Ruben Blades is bringing this song to the setting of La Veredda del Ocho and two. And apparently that he's talking about 82nd Street or something in the 80s intersecting

with Second Avenue uptown. He hasn't been in New York too long and he's still here, Buscan lo guayava, just like he was at home in Panama, or whatever Latin American country that we want to transpose identifying with this song. And the metaphor leaves a lot open in terms of what this squabba is or what it represents. I think the sexual or the romantic reading is the ones that has been supported by the artist's own admission. And definitely, I think, is the most widespread interpretation, but I don't actually, I find the song like incredibly beguiling and sweet and

playful, but I don't find it to be intensely sexual for me. That's not the kind of groove it has to me. It has a more sweet and beguiling groove than a like, like hot groove to me. And I think about, first of all, the guava itself. I think about the sweetness of the experience. of being in El Monte in the Caribbean for me in Puerto Rico, finding wild fruits as one literally does, you know? And I think about the nostalgia that a lot of then, like, urban Caribbean migrants to the city have for that landscape and how some of it is incredibly romanticized,

but there also is this kind of like incomparable beauty to that experience of being in El Monte that I feel, that the song evokes a little bit, but now it's just at the level of like concepts. It's about looking in a very wonderful place for the most wonderful version of a wonderful thing, the most golden, the ripest, the most fragrant.

What does you say? That has flavor, and I love that has menthol, which is such an interesting little scent. detail, like I wouldn't really describe guavas as minty. What they're describing this in this song is never finding, you know, the platonic guava. I found a golden house.

I found a golden house, I found a golden house, that's a guayaba no la yada yada yalla. So even though he found this golden house, the guava was not to be found. And so in New York, I feel like it's a little bit, the song, like, has a lot of the same longing that Manhattan does, but I feel like Manhattan puts a melancholic sort of nocturnal spin on that longing.

And in this song, we get to indulge a little more in the sweetness of that longing for a city that's always a little bit out of our grasp and a little bit more in the pleasure of the hunt. I really enjoy your interpretation of this song and especially connect with that sort of playfulness that you identify, which comes through in the music to me at these key moments like when Ruben Blades starts kind of doing this thing I could only describe as scat singing about halfway through the song. It's very Mon Rivera. Maybe that is like a sexy kind of, you know, mating call or something, but I don't know, it sounds just like they're having fun to me. And that kind of moment just like jumps off the record, you know, almost I guess 50 years from when this was originally recorded. And it just, it just like catches your ear in this wonderful way. Absolutely.

And there's also that other moment. I think you were picking up on the kind of, when you say they're just having fun, like there is to me a little bit of a homo social pleasure in this song at the very end in another sort of quasi-scatting moment where Ruben saying, Ururu, Warara, where he was to be, and, you know, it's really about like the bond between men looking for women.

More it is, it's not about her because he never finds her. The only name or the only you in the song, the only other, is Miguel, his homeboy, his pana. Wow. We just went through the looking glass with this song. Incredible. This song is the second track on, I think, what's still the best-selling and most iconic salsa album of all time, Siamra, which, as you said, Ruben Blades made with Willie Colong and came out in 1978. but Siemira is super important in this iconic status it has in representing what was the still forming salsa sound, which is really an amalgam of kind of multiple forms that had that were meeting in New York,

also under pressures to do with Cuban exile and to do with the kind of coming of age of the great migration of Puerto Ricans to New York at mid-century. There are all kinds of, I mean, I'm not going to give a history of salsa right now. Like, it's too complex. But the reality is it's a quintessential New York music and that many argue that New York is kind of the geographic center, if not the cultural center of this multicultural Caribbean music. And part of the reason I wanted to talk about this song with Manhattan is also because I think we don't speak enough across languages about. American music and what American popular music is, like, Fania was so hugely fucking popular.

Like, Ruben Blades is so popular and beloved. But at the same time, like, people don't necessarily think about the long legacy of songs about New York that were made in New York and that were sung in Spanish. And I'm sure that's the case for other languages as well, but, like, Spanish is like, you know,

the other language of the U.S. It's the most widely spoken other language of the U.S. And in New York, such a Caribbean city, I think it's important to think about these music together because people are listening to them alongside one another, even if they are not intending to or are not given credit for that kind of bilingual cultural knowledge. Karina, thank you for such a deeply fun and a deeply illuminating conversation. I really appreciate you joining us and bringing these modern classics with you.

It was an absolute pleasure, Nate, anytime. Switched-on-pop is produced by Nate Sloan, Charlie Harding, Megan Lubin, edited by Jolie Myers, engineered by Brandon McFarlane. Illustrations by Iris Gottlieb, social media by Abby Barr. Executive producers are Nashat Kurwa and Hana Rosen, were a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and a production of Vulture. Big thanks to JBL for hooking us up with the gear we need to make our show all summer long. And big thanks to Karina for joining us today. We're going to put a link to more of her work in the show notes.

Go check it out. You won't be disappointed. Find more of our show anywhere you get podcasts. We're dropping new episodes every Tuesday. You can always log on to Switchshonpop.com to check them out and learn more. We're also on the Twitter, on the Instagram, at Switched on Pop. Tell us what you're listening to. Tell us what your modern classics are.

Until then, my friends, I will see you next week. And all that remains is for me to say, thanks for listening.