The Wait

Antonio Romero and Rafael Ruiz have been making music together longer than most people have been alive. According to my research, their first official album, De Triana Al Rocio, was released in 1971. Since that initial release, they released another 26 albums together. Originating from Seville, their bread and butter is flamenco music. 

By all accounts, they had a successful and meaningful music career. Reflecting on their career, Romero says, “We started out when we were 14 and, being young, played at both singing and bullfighting. It wasn’t until our fathers died that we said to ourselves: ‘We have no choice but to take this music thing seriously.’ Basically, because it was the only thing that gave us money that could help our mothers. That was the biggest sacrifice we could make.” 

On top of being able to generate their livelihood from music to support their families, they found themselves rubbing their shoulders at a party in 1992 with the president of Venezuela, Carlos Andrés Pérez. For entertainment, a flamenco dancer performed, inspiring Romero to write a song. Romero said, “The young woman [Patricia Cubillán] started dancing and I told her: ‘Dale a tu cuerpo alegría, Magdalena, que tu cuerpo es pa’ darle alegría y cosa buena’ – put some joy in your body Magdalena, as your body is made to be given joy and good things.’ That’s what inspired me to write it.”

The initial song did well in Spain when it was released in 1993. It gained even more popularity when a remix was made, pushing it up further the Latin music charts. It wasn’t until 1995 when another remix of the song was made that made it successful in the US.

What about if I told you Romero and Ruiz made up the Latin pop duo, Los del Río. Does that give you any clues to their song? How about if it could be considered the greatest one-hit wonder of all time? That’s right, they were the creators of the Macarena.

They were in their mid 40’s when they wrote the Macarena. It became a worldwide sensation in their late forties, coming 3 years after the conception in Venezuela and 2 remixes later. They became international superstars overnight but had 30 years of music leading up to that moment.

I stumbled across this tweet from Jack Butcher which is a great visualization of how life works. Looking from the outside, Los del Río could have had 20 years of “This is Pointless” material leading up to their break. To be fair, as quickly as they rose, they faded off into the distance and were not able to catch fire from their hit. Looking at stock charts of Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft are more closely aligned to the chart below. We are all trying to have the shortest runway possible with the quickest exponential growth.

My outlook on life is that we should all be doing things that put a smile on our faces. From the outside, people could look at my weekly blog posts as being pointless. Even worse, I could think that, but I don’t, I enjoy it. I have no idea where my writing could be on the curve. I could be on one of the early ticks and it isn’t until my 40’s where something hits. There is also a great chance of nothing hitting at all. That’s alright because I’m enjoying what I’m doing even though it’s hard to feel progress.

I really hope this post can provide perspective to you and your life. This curve pertains to my writing, but this curve can be applied to another aspect of your life. Even if our passions and hobbies don’t take off, it doesn’t matter because we are doing activities we love and enjoying the moment.

Peace and Love.