Julia Elena Dávalos

I was 8 years old, in 1969. We were living in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. One day my dad came home with a new LP record – “Sangre Salteña” by Julia Elena Dávalos, an Argentinean artist with a powerful voice and high-pitched yee-huh’s all over the place. We immediately fell in love with her. We took the record with us when we moved back to Israel, and it was one of our most-played records for years, until one day it vanished. All that remained was a poor-quality cassette tape onto which I had recorded some of the songs.

I had met a few Argentineans around the world over the years, and always asked them if they knew of Julia Elena Dávalos. Some did, and some were even familiar with a number of her songs, but no one could tell me how I could go about getting a new record to replace the missing one.

When the Internet got going, I posted a question on an Argentinean forum, but no one there could help me either. Later on, when ecommerce had become commonplace, I found some Argentinean online stores selling CDs, everything from A to Z – everything except “Sangre Salteña”, that is.

Finally earlier this year, I made it to Argentina for the first time. Only spent two days there; it was the end of a 12-night cruise from Rio de Janeiro and I had to get back to work in the USA. I must have visited every record store in Buenos Aires in my quest to find the album. A couple of places had CDs of Julia Elena Dávalos' more-recent albums, which I immediately bought. But no one had “Sangre Salteña” or even heard of it. At the last store I visited, the lady did know the album but did not have it. She lamented with me that Argentineans were not doing enough to preserve their old treasures. She then suggested that I try my luck at a flea market at the other side of town. Short of that, she said, I would have to fly to Salta and beg for a copy from señora Dávalos herself.

A 10-minute cab ride later (taxis are so cheap in South America!) I was at that flea market. It was filled with antiques and dust, I usually don’t set foot in such places. I found a tiny record store that had thousands of old vinyl records in boxes stacked up five high all around. I browsed through several boxes and was about to give it up when the owner came over and asked what I was looking for. Good thing I still speak some Spanish. I said “Sangre Salteña de Julia Elena Dávalos”, and in about 30 seconds he pulled out the record from one of the boxes. It looked to be in quite bad shape, a few scratches on the surface and a crumbling envelope, but I didn’t care. I paid the 15 pesos that he commanded, and left with a smile from ear to ear.

A few weeks later I was back home in Israel. The old recordless envelope that we had was in better shape than the one I found in Buenos Aires, so I was going to transfer the record into that one. I opened the cabinet and pulled out the envelope. It was strangely heavy and stiff. I looked inside and pulled out a record… it was our old record. Somehow after going missing for many years it had reappeared, probably snuck back in by an embarrassed someone who had borrowed it and forgot to return!

Silly thing is, we now have two records but can’t play either: our turntable no longer works. So for now we’re still just humming “una noche de junio por la frontera…” while playing the bad cassette tape.

Last night I found señora Dávalos on Facebook. I’m not sure how I got there. I sent her a friend request, and let her know that she has devoted fans in Israel. She accepted it this morning already, with a fantastic thank-you note. Her Spanish was quite over my head, I'll need my dad to translate, but I think I gathered that she may have even read my stories on here!

“Sangre Salteña” is a treasure. If the recording company or anyone still has a good-quality master, I wish they would put it on a CD. And my other wish is that someone would post the lyrics of all the songs on the record, I can’t make them all out just by listening.