It gave us Disco and
Spanglish
By JOE CARDONA
jccigar@aol.com
Super Q, I love you. La mejor
musica la tocas tú. This jingle,
loosely translated into ``Super
Q: You play the best music,'' is
probably most recognizable to
people who spent their teens
and twenties in South Florida
during the 1970s and '80s.
It was the station ID for what
was arguably the first bilingual
radio station in the country,
Super Q 107.5, and whether
you loved it or thought it was an
aural atrocity, it punctuated a
distinct period in Miami's history
and served as a welcome mat
to many Cuban and Latino
immigrants who reached our
shores.
The year was 1979, Miami was
rife with unemployment and
languishing in double-digit
inflation. Amid all the doom and
gloom a new fad seemed to
have taken the city by storm,
disco. The cabaret scene of the
1950s and '60s had yielded to
dance clubs called discotheques
or discos for short.
The new dances were less
cheek to cheek and more about
individually shaking your booty.
And while the music was less
intimate than the crooners of
the previous generations, disco
was more of a social
movement, attracting and
inviting enthusiasts from all
walks of life. The music was the
precursor to what today we
identify as the urban sound.
Blacks, gays and Latinos were
more prominently represented
through the tempo, lyrics and
performers of the music.
At that time, radio was
completely segregated by
language. Fortunately for
listeners the airwaves were not
as homogenized and downright
repetitive as they are today.
American radio -- and its unique
regional peculiarities -- was
truly a thing to behold. And it
was based on that broadcasting
entrepreneurial spirit that execs
from the Susquehanna radio
company -- a modestly sized
company out of Pittsburgh that
owned several stations across
the land -- decided that they
would break ground and
attempt to establish a radio
station that would capture the
attention of the burgeoning
Cuban-American population and
yet manage to keep some of
their older ethnic listeners.
The formula seemed simple and
yet quite risky in Miami at the
close of the 1970s. The idea
was to broadcast essentially in
Spanglish. The jocks would play
one song in Spanish and the
following number in English.
``It gave me the freedom to be
myself,'' said long-time South
Florida radio personality Leo
Vela. After having done a
couple of years at the dwindling
Disco 96, which was all English,
Vela was approached by Julio
Mendez and Herb Levin to
come on the air at Super Q and
speak like he would to his
friends on the phone or at a
party.
``I warned them my Spanish
was not very good and they
said they didn't care, that they
wanted to sound like the kids
were speaking on the streets of
Miami,'' explains Vela, whose
``Leo en la descarga'' (in the
jam) became one of South
Florida's most recognizable
monikers to date.
``When I first went on the air,''
Vela said, ``the old-time Cuban
broadcasters used to say that I
was butchering the Spanish
language. The slang I spoke on
the air was an exact replica of
what second generation
Cuban-Americans sounded like.''
The station broke ground on
other fronts as well. It became
one of the first to broadcast live
music mixes, which was another
unique characteristic of disco
music -- songs at the discos
were mixed together by disc
jockeys without a break in the
middle.
Maria Cristina Ruiz, who hosted
one of the era's most
memorable shows, la discoteca
en el aire (the disco on the air),
explained how the show's
purpose was to simulate the
sound of a live disco through the
airwaves.
``We piped in crowd noise and
made it sound very realistic. In
fact, we began to recreate the
disco ambiance so well in the
booth that we began to have
real parties in there on the
weekends to the point where
management had to intervene
and asked me to tone it down a
bit,'' remembered Ruiz.
Super Q will forever mark a
distinct period of Miami history
for me. It exposed me and
thousands of second-generation
Cuban and other hyphenated
Americans to the sounds of
artists like Willy Chirino, Carlos
Oliva and the Judge's Nephews
and Frankie Marcos and Clouds.
It also cut us some slack on our
not-so-perfect Spanish.
As for the jingle, Carlos Oliva,
who produced the piece for the
radio station, revealed who the
voice on the catchy hook was. It
turns out the voice on that
recording would foreshadow the
next foray of the Latino
crossover: It was Gloria
Estefan.
Read more:
http://www.miamiherald.com/20
10/07/24/1744733/it-gave-us-dis
co-and-spanglish.html#ixzz1B1VIASFF
Spanglish
By JOE CARDONA
jccigar@aol.com
Super Q, I love you. La mejor
musica la tocas tú. This jingle,
loosely translated into ``Super
Q: You play the best music,'' is
probably most recognizable to
people who spent their teens
and twenties in South Florida
during the 1970s and '80s.
It was the station ID for what
was arguably the first bilingual
radio station in the country,
Super Q 107.5, and whether
you loved it or thought it was an
aural atrocity, it punctuated a
distinct period in Miami's history
and served as a welcome mat
to many Cuban and Latino
immigrants who reached our
shores.
The year was 1979, Miami was
rife with unemployment and
languishing in double-digit
inflation. Amid all the doom and
gloom a new fad seemed to
have taken the city by storm,
disco. The cabaret scene of the
1950s and '60s had yielded to
dance clubs called discotheques
or discos for short.
The new dances were less
cheek to cheek and more about
individually shaking your booty.
And while the music was less
intimate than the crooners of
the previous generations, disco
was more of a social
movement, attracting and
inviting enthusiasts from all
walks of life. The music was the
precursor to what today we
identify as the urban sound.
Blacks, gays and Latinos were
more prominently represented
through the tempo, lyrics and
performers of the music.
At that time, radio was
completely segregated by
language. Fortunately for
listeners the airwaves were not
as homogenized and downright
repetitive as they are today.
American radio -- and its unique
regional peculiarities -- was
truly a thing to behold. And it
was based on that broadcasting
entrepreneurial spirit that execs
from the Susquehanna radio
company -- a modestly sized
company out of Pittsburgh that
owned several stations across
the land -- decided that they
would break ground and
attempt to establish a radio
station that would capture the
attention of the burgeoning
Cuban-American population and
yet manage to keep some of
their older ethnic listeners.
The formula seemed simple and
yet quite risky in Miami at the
close of the 1970s. The idea
was to broadcast essentially in
Spanglish. The jocks would play
one song in Spanish and the
following number in English.
``It gave me the freedom to be
myself,'' said long-time South
Florida radio personality Leo
Vela. After having done a
couple of years at the dwindling
Disco 96, which was all English,
Vela was approached by Julio
Mendez and Herb Levin to
come on the air at Super Q and
speak like he would to his
friends on the phone or at a
party.
``I warned them my Spanish
was not very good and they
said they didn't care, that they
wanted to sound like the kids
were speaking on the streets of
Miami,'' explains Vela, whose
``Leo en la descarga'' (in the
jam) became one of South
Florida's most recognizable
monikers to date.
``When I first went on the air,''
Vela said, ``the old-time Cuban
broadcasters used to say that I
was butchering the Spanish
language. The slang I spoke on
the air was an exact replica of
what second generation
Cuban-Americans sounded like.''
The station broke ground on
other fronts as well. It became
one of the first to broadcast live
music mixes, which was another
unique characteristic of disco
music -- songs at the discos
were mixed together by disc
jockeys without a break in the
middle.
Maria Cristina Ruiz, who hosted
one of the era's most
memorable shows, la discoteca
en el aire (the disco on the air),
explained how the show's
purpose was to simulate the
sound of a live disco through the
airwaves.
``We piped in crowd noise and
made it sound very realistic. In
fact, we began to recreate the
disco ambiance so well in the
booth that we began to have
real parties in there on the
weekends to the point where
management had to intervene
and asked me to tone it down a
bit,'' remembered Ruiz.
Super Q will forever mark a
distinct period of Miami history
for me. It exposed me and
thousands of second-generation
Cuban and other hyphenated
Americans to the sounds of
artists like Willy Chirino, Carlos
Oliva and the Judge's Nephews
and Frankie Marcos and Clouds.
It also cut us some slack on our
not-so-perfect Spanish.
As for the jingle, Carlos Oliva,
who produced the piece for the
radio station, revealed who the
voice on the catchy hook was. It
turns out the voice on that
recording would foreshadow the
next foray of the Latino
crossover: It was Gloria
Estefan.
Read more:
http://www.miamiherald.com/20
10/07/24/1744733/it-gave-us-dis
co-and-spanglish.html#ixzz1B1VIASFF
| Mike in the Night,Agustin Acosta Annie Lanz,Jose Jose. Promoter, Maria Cristina Ruiz,Rene Giraldo |
| PROGRAM # 13 on OPEN HOUSE RADIO On March 9.1979 a unique radio station was born , catering specifically to the Cuban youth of Miami,the DJs were instructed to talk like "the streets" where a new language was being invented they called it "Spanglish" The programming consisted of one American hit followed by a Latin hit. The station was ground breaking in many ways,responsible for many "firsts" in Latin programming. Open house Radio has managed to reunite many of the original on air personalities of the original SUPER Q FM 108,including original station jingles and commercials . This program will truly remain as a time capsule of a legendary radio station here in Miami that was to become the Universidad de La Radio to many future radio and TV broadcasters,join us in this very special and unique recreation of the soundtrack of Miami. |
| SUPER Q DJs Yesterday & Today |
A TRIBUTE TO SUPER Q FM 108
THE RADIO STATION THAT CHANGED MIAMI
| Recording The Super Q Tribute at Open House Studios in Miami January 12 ,20111 |
BEHIND THE SCENES VIDEO
