50 Years Later, 'Feliz Navidad' Still Delivers On Its Bilingual Message
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It's been 50 years since Jose Feliciano came up with this seasonal earworm.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FELIZ NAVIDAD")
JOSE FELICIANO: (Singing) Feliz Navidad. Feliz Navidad.
MARTIN: Now, as NPR's Mandalit del Barco reports, Feliciano is celebrating the anniversary with a new recording.
MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Feliz Navidad is just two phrases of holiday cheer in Spanish and in English repeated over and over again.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FELIZ NAVIDAD")
FELICIANO: (Singing) Feliz navidad, prospero ano y felicidad.
BOBBY SANABRIA: Musically, it's simplistic, but that doesn't take away from the charm of the song at all.
DEL BARCO: Musician Bobby Sanabria is co-director of the Bronx Music Heritage Center.
SANABRI: "Feliz Navidad's" one of those kind of songs that, like "Happy Birthday," is very, very iconic, and anybody can sing it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FELIZ NAVIDAD")
FELICIANO: (Singing) I want to wish you a merry Christmas. I want to wish you a merry Christmas.
DEL BARCO: Jose Feliciano remembers writing the song in 1970 at the RCA Studios in Los Angeles.
FELICIANO: We didn't want to put out a schmaltzy Christmas album, so we decided to do it differently.
DEL BARCO: He sang bilingually, played the guitar and also the cuatro, a 10-stringed instrument his uncle taught him back in Puerto Rico.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOSE FELICIANO SONG, "FELIZ NAVIDAD")
FELICIANO: There had been other Christmas songs that were bilingual, "Mamacita, Donde Esta Santa Claus?" But "Feliz Navidad" was expressing the fact that I felt very lonely. I missed my family. I missed Christmas carols with them. I missed the whole Christmas scene.
DEL BARCO: Stuck in an LA studio, Feliciano says he missed celebrating Noche Buena, Christmas Eve, with his 11 brothers thousands of miles away. So for this new version, he's assembled 30 friends, including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jason Mraz and Gloria Gaynor.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FELIZ NAVIDAD")
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing in Spanish).
DEL BARCO: Linda Viero Caballero, known as La India, also sings on this new version.
LA INDIA: He's just an amazing improviser, and everyone has always been so proud of Jose because he never abandoned the Latin culture.
DEL BARCO: Jose Feliciano was born in Puerto Rico 75 years ago. He started playing ukulele at 3, and by 15, after his family moved to New York, he was playing guitar and singing in coffeehouses in Greenwich Village. That's where a record executive spotted him.
FELICIANO: RCA didn't want to sign in the beginning because they didn't know what to do with me.
DEL BARCO: So Feliciano went to Argentina, where he added jazz and R&B to boleros, ballads. After several albums of those, in 1968, RCA released his version of a song by The Mamas & the Papas.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'")
FELICIANO: (Singing) California dreamin' dreamin' (singing in Spanish).
I didn't plan to sing in Spanish, but I thought, you know, this feels really good. Let me do this.
DEL BARCO: On the flip side of that single was Feliciano's version of The Doors' "Light My Fire."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LIGHT MY FIRE")
FELICIANO: (Singing) Well, you know that it would be untrue and you know that I would be a liar if I was to go and tell you, mama, we couldn't get much higher.
DEL BARCO: It became his biggest hit. Feliciano says he wanted to record that song for Motown, but he was told it was, quote, "a Black label." He responded this way.
FELICIANO: I never realized that people saw colors differently. I was never prejudice. And that's one thing I appreciated about being blind.
DEL BARCO: That same year, 1968, Feliciano won the best new artist Grammy, and he performed the national anthem at the World Series.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
FELICIANO: (Singing) Oh, say, can you see by the dawn's early light?
DEL BARCO: For his interpretation, Feliciano was booed.
FELICIANO: I had to leave America and play in other countries because I wasn't getting any radio play after I did "The Star-Spangled Banner."
DEL BARCO: But for fellow Nuyoricans - New York Puerto Ricans - like Bobby Sanabria, Feliciano was a hero.
SANABRI: Now everybody sings it that way (laughter) with some soul. That was a brave thing that he did. Not only was he Puertorriqueno, not only was he young, not only was he hip, but he was anti-establishment.
DEL BARCO: Jose Feliciano went on to record many more albums and the theme song for the 1970s sitcom "Chico And The Man." The singer now lives in Connecticut, and he can't get over the fact that the simple Christmas song he wrote half a century ago has endured.
FELICIANO: You bet your sweet bippy I'm so surprised.
DEL BARCO: Mandalit del Barco, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FELIZ NAVIDAD")
FELICIANO: (Singing) Feliz Navidad.
Copyright © 2020 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.