From the Sun-Sentinel South Florida
'Ketchup Song' is catching
on
By Magaly Morales
South Florida Sun-Sentinel staff writer
October 2, 2002
The original version in Spanish is called Aserejé, and the English version has been dubbed "The Ketchup Song" by Y-100. It's playing all over South Florida radio, nearly non-stop on some Spanish-language stations and is a staple on TV's Sábado Gigante. The dance is even being taught on a local campus.
Aserejé (ah-sere-HAY) is performed by Pilar, Lola and Lucía Muñoz, three sisters from Spain, who make up a group called Las Ketchup. They take their name from their father, flamenco guitarist Juan "Tomate" Muñoz.
Aserejé is a song about a song. It tells the story of Diego, an afro-gypsy Rastafarian, who spends his evenings dancing to rap and hip-hop. Diego likes a popular 1979 tune, Rapper's Delight by Sugar Hill Gang. But he doesn't know the English words, so he pronounces them as gibberish. Aserejé is a Spanish phonetic translation for "I said a hip," taken from the Sugar Hill Gang song.
A prime attraction of the song is the gibberish, made into an impossible tongue twister. This week, the single is No. 1 in 11 European countries, according to Sony Discos. A re-mix version of the song is already playing in some South Florida nightclubs, and the English version debuted on English language radio station Y-100 a week ago.
The original lyrics from Rapper's Delight are: "I said a hip hop the hippie the hippie / to the hip hip hop, a you don't stop / the rock it to the bang bang boogie / say up jumped the boogie / to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat." They became, in the Ketchup language, "Aserejé, ja de jé de jebe tu de jebere sebiunouva majabi an de bugui an de buididipí."
"I heard about the single earlier in June, but it wasn't the international phenomenon it is today," says DJ Javier Romero, of Spanish-language station WAMR (FM 107.5). He was the first to air the song in South Florida, back in August. "Weeks later I traveled to Spain, and people in the streets, the taxi drivers, everybody talked about this group of young women who sang a song that no one could understand." He also saw the song being featured in TV shows, commercials, magazines and newspapers. Aserejé had even become the theme song of the Spanish national basketball team. "It was then that I realized that we had a single that was about to take the world by storm," recalls Romero. He returned with a copy of the CD, and started playing it on the radio. The reaction, he says, was immediate. But will Aserejé catch fire the way the Macarena did, or like many European hits, will it fizzle in the United States?
"Macarena didn't become a phenomenon until a year and a half after its debut," Romero says. "The song was played everywhere, without causing much noise. However, when it returned the following summer, it came attached to the dance we all learned, and it was then that it erupted throughout the international music scene." Romero thinks the same is happening with Aserejé, but this single, he says, is climbing the charts more quickly. Aserejé is currently No. 1 in Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Switzerland and most of Latin America. The trio is currently recording the single in Chinese and Japanese. In the U.S., Billboard's Hot Latin Tracks has it at No. 13 after five weeks.
South Floridians catching Ketchup fever include Claudia Sahagun, Spanish
professor at Broward Community College, who is teaching the dance to her
class. She even offered to give extra credit to anybody who could figure
out the words. "The song is playing non-stop on the radio,"
says the Venezuelan native, who has lived in the United States for 20
years. "Everybody is getting into it, so I thought it would be cute
to use it as a learning tool."
The same is happening on television. On Sábado Gigante, the longest running variety show on Spanish-language television, the hosts, including Romero, urge the studio audience to get up and dance the Aserejé. The choreography is much easier to learn that the Macarena's. "It doesn't take a great dancer," says Romero. While the Macarena included a much more complicated hand and foot sequence; Aserejé features four simple hand moves that resemble the dance from the movie Grease.
Las Ketchup are expected to do a press tour in Miami next week. The trio's first live performance in the United States will be during WAMR's annual music festival "Amor a la Musica" (Love To The Music), Nov. 10 at the Miami Arena. Magaly Morales can be reached at mmorales@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4717.
Copyright ©
2002, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
