I'll name that tune - maybe

I was a bit worried about Spanish music when we first got here. I was worried that I didn't know any. I suspected that "Viva España" didn't count. After all, one grows up with music. It insidiously surrounds you. It comes at you in shops, on adverts, from the telly, and in films. 

I'm bad with music. When the musicians on stage incite the crowd to clap along I'm the only one in the audience out of time. The level of my rhythmic incompetence may be demonstrated by my being barred from using the triangle in my infant school music class; I was relegated to the benches. In secondary school I was beaten when the music teacher, carrying out tests for new members of the school choir, accused me of singing so badly on purpose. I don't remember song lyrics or titles particularly well yet, despite all these failings, I still know hundreds of songs that I never tried to learn. This is perversely opposite to the handful of poems that I've struggled to memorize and repeatedly forgotten over the years. 

It's not that I don't like music. One of my claims to fame is that one of the first bands I saw live was the Beatles. I was so young I remember almost nothing about the event apart from fearing mightily that the underfoot movement of the dress circle at the Odeon meant it was going to collapse. I achieved more appropriate concert-attending age in time for the era of the Stadium bands, usually only in binocular range. I was pleased when the musical fashions changed  and concerts became more intimate even if it did mean I was close enough to Chelsea (the punk band, not the football team) to get spit on by their lead singer. Here in Spain, I've been to at least half a dozen festivals as well as seeing innumerable modern bands. Nowadays I very seldom listen to older music, not that there's anything wrong with it, it's just that there's so much new stuff all the time.

I'm a bit backward in my listening habits. Try as I might, I can't get the TikTok algorithm to do its thing and throw up lots of new bands for me. I still listen to the radio and I still buy music, as mp3s. That last is because I think that the way Spotify pays artists is nothing short of scandalous. It's fine if you're Bad Bunny or Taylor Swift with millions of hits, but absolutely useless if you're some struggling local band. There's also the problem, of selection. The Internet means that if you want to listen to PVA or Axolotes Mexicanos it's easy to find them but the problem remains of knowing what to look for. That was the same problem I faced when I got here. When I'd been in the UK, growing up with music, I'd built up a list of sources I trusted to keep me informed. That might be Whistling Bob (though it wasn't), John Peel, one of the music magazines, a particular radio station, or the fat bloke in the HMV shop who knew absolutely everything about music. In Spain, I had to start from scratch.

The still obvious answer, at the time, was the radio. All I had to do was push some buttons and there were the major broadcasters. Just like in the UK, there is a mix of local and national broadcasters. There are voice broadcasters, some with specializations - sport, news - and there are music channels, again with specialisms from jazz via contemporary to classical. The main broadcasters were easy to work out. For spoken-word radio, the big stations were and are SER, COPE, Onda Cero, and Radio Nacional. The big music stations, the ones that repeat the same weekly playlist over and over, are 40 Principales and Cadena Dial and with the same format, but playing only Spanish language music, there's Cadena Cien.

I don't know if it's simple wilfulness or what, but the least popular of the big broadcasters is Radio Nacional, and that's the one I liked most at the beginning and still do. I spent hours in my first job listening to their news channel, Radio 5, as I worked repairing furniture. Their modern music channel, Radio 3 plays music that isn't exactly mainstream but is nevertheless modern - they now describe their musical style as fighting algorithm-driven radio. At the time, though, their programming strategy was bizarre. They'd have the sort of pop festival, potential up-and-comers and old-time superstar music on one programme, followed by a programme that featured Bulgarian folk music. I mean that literally. For goodness sake they broadcast jazz in a midday slot for five days a week! All I could see in their programming was a lemming like desire for self destruction. That's now changed and I would thoroughly recommend today's Radio 3. Its more mainstream programmes are at popular times and it keeps the niche music for the niche slots. Podcasts, catch-up radio if you prefer, means that whatever style of contemporary music you like, from dance to flamenco, you'll find that Radio 3 will have it covered.

So, in those early days, in Spain, I listened to Radio 3 and 40 Principales, I followed up on the names on festival posters by internet searches to see what the artists sounded like, and I made a determined effort to learn the music scene. If there were modern music programmes on the telly, I watched. I asked my English language learners who I should check out disguising it as a teaching exercise. I got to a sort of level of half-knowing, of being satisfied with what I didn't know. After all, when I heard that Lewis Capaldi had been the best-selling artist in Britain one year I wondered who he was. I'd never heard of him but it didn't seem like the end of the world.

So, when we're eating lunch in front of the telly and waiting for the 3pm news, watching the Spanish version of Wheel of Fortune, and they get to the round where the contestants have to find a song title having been given the artist's name, I don't worry that I never, ever, know the band/group/singer or title. I'm happy to be equally musically half aware in my new, and my old, homes.