In Santa Fe, it’s always OK to say Órale
It’s quite customary, when entertainers are on tour, for them to develop bits to appeal specifically to the townfolk at each stop. So it’s no surprise that, for instance, the dance troupe Pilobolus last month formed bodily constructions to cast shadows that formed the outlines of Santa Fe’s cathedral and its adobe dwellings, complete with cardboard ristras.
And former resident Eliza Gilkyson, performing with two other singersongwriters at the Lensic last week, of course included the hometown favorite, “Lights of Santa Fe.”
Yet, we all know, what works in other places might hit some strange potholes in New Mexico.
So, when banjo virtuosos and wedded couple Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn were at the Lensic earlier this week, they had a fill-in-the-blanks portion all set to customize to their audience. In a song made known by the Coon Creek Girls, an Appalachian string band active from the 1930s to ’50s, about their concert travels, “Going
Round This World,” the pair was all set to insert Santa Fe as one of the stops.
The thing is, they told the audience, they needed a word to rhyme with Santa Fe.
That stumped the locals for a bit, with some tentative suggestions, including what sounded like “Fanta Se,” a term that seemed to confuse the entertainers but is well-known to those who compare this town to an adobe Disneyland.
But that was only the beginning. When one man in the balcony shouted out, “Órale!” the audience enthusiastically took up his suggestion, echoing the word around the auditorium.
“What?” Fleck and Washburn kept asking, until she finally thought she got it. “Ándale!” she said. Nope, that wasn’t it. An audience member up front finally cleared things up when Fleck requested a spelling.
Oh. Órale. They finally got the word. But, they asked, what does it mean?
More muffled responses until they settled on one: “Anything you want it to mean!”
A handy word indeed, they said, and quickly worked it into the song.
But what DOES it mean? My old SpanishEnglish dictionary is no help. The word isn’t listed there.
Online, the Urban Dictionary’s top definition is “hell, yeah” or “right on,” but it adds that it has a host of meanings. Wikipedia says it’s a Mexican or MexicanAmerican interjection to express approval or encouragement.
Compa Chuy on YouTube gives “órale” as the first Spanish word gringos need to learn, beginning with pretty much the same definition given by the Lensic audience: “It means anything you want it to mean,” he says, offering examples, with an accompanying diversity of vocal inflections, ranging from “watch it” to “hurry up” to “that’s amazing” to “OK.”
In another YouTube riff, Juannie Brasco explains it can mean anything from agreement to surprise to encouragement to “we’ve gotta go!” And, he adds at the end, “Sometimes it just means ... órale.”
That puts the expression in the same category as “híjole,” which borderlands author Denise Chavez lovingly expounded on in “Loving Pedro Infante,” or Costa Rica’s expressive “pura vida.”
Well, you learn something new every day. Of “órale,” Washburn said, “That’s definitely going on the bus with us.”
And while she said at one point, “I don’t speak ‘Santa Fe,’” as more confusing terms arose, including a raffle winner’s name, Washburn did seem to enjoy another Santa Fe anomaly.
They had just come here from a week and a half touring Southern states. There, when they reached the part in their act where she talks about all the traditional murder ballads having female victims, and says she wanted to write one where the guy got killed, Southern men did not appear to be amused. She imitated their silent reaction, which looked like a cross between someone getting huffy and someone feeling that the natural order of life was being tampered with.
But in Santa Fe, when she came to the part about getting more male victims in murder ballads, she heard a male voice shout an encouraging, “Go, girl!”
The City Different, indeed. Órale!