A thousand apologies to Play, as well I know that the genre of musical critique traditionally and exclusively falls within their journalistic realm, but I fear can restrain myself no longer. I simply must inform you, dear readers, of the euphoric pleasures to be found in the sonic experience of “Primitive Love,” the landmark LP of 1986, bestowed upon the world by one of modern popular music’s most enduring institutions, the Miami Sound Machine.
The album is, quite simply, a tour-de-force of muscular Latin rhythms and sweet, passionate emotion. I do not consider it hyperbole to declare it the greatest artistic achievement of the twentieth century, nor do I think it uncouth to place it on a level with the soul-stirring poetry of Anna Barbauld, or the musical oeuvre of the great Claude Debussy. Indeed, I would be remiss not to do so.
But enough of empty praise! What of the music? My friends, it is nothing short of captivating. As the album opens, the sound of singer Gloria Estefan’s voice sensuously repeating the word “body” without instrumental accompaniment immediately informs the listener that this is not the music of the head — I think Iannis Xenakis’ 1957 composition “Pithopratka” certainly burdened the globe with enough of that for one lifetime, hmm? Rather, this is music embodied, music as tactile experience. Here are songs which grab the listener by the testicles and caress them vigorously until he spills forth his seed in a paroxysm of jubilation.
The title track underscores this theme with an almost Rousseauean proclamation. “I want what it used to be,” Estefan breathes. “Primitive love.” And when, in the next song, Estefan whispers to her lover that “the words get in the way,” the listener is transported backward through time to the savage utopia of the philosopher, where unbridled emotions are expressed as they only truly can be, through a series of panted grunts and violent thrusts of the groin.
Dare I fail to mention this musical masterpiece’s most celebrated composition? “Conga” is a riveting call to arms, an onslaught of brass and percussion that defies anyone who hears it not to stand up and gyrate her hips in unadulterated joy. Feel the music!
“Surrender Paradise,” the album’s denouement, is a subtle, slow-building ballad, and clearly an homage to the poet Byron, though without all that dreadful melancholy which permeates so much of his work. When Estefan sings, “Sun-cast waves are frolicking along the foamy shore / I surrender to you, paradise,” one cannot help but recall George Gordon’s restless pilgrim as he announces: “I live not in myself, but I become / Portion of that around me . . . when the soul can flee, / And with . . . the heaving plain / Of ocean, or the stars, mingle — and not in vain.”
O poet! Never more truly have words expressed the dizzying sublimity of experience that is “Primitive Love.” Its soaring melodies and visceral rhythms do absorb me, I become one with the beat, I shake my body, I do the conga — and I am forever changed.
Jim Wagner is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected].
