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August 4, 2021
Cristina Sandu's Playlist for Her Novel "The Union of Synchronized Swimmers"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Awarded the Toisinkoinen Literary Prize, Cristina Sandu's novel The Union of Synchronized Swimmers is both powerful and elegant in its spare prose.
Yelena Moskovich wrote of the book:
"With structural, determined prose, Cristina Sandu embodies the Eastern bloc cryptology of storytelling where strings of non-verbal cues and mistranslations become ways of speaking. Sandu evokes that eerie Soviet sense of hope, brimming with futility and grace."
In her own words, here is Cristina Sandu's Book Notes music playlist for her novel The Union of Synchronized Swimmers:
When I find a song that sets me in a particular kind of mood, I use it to write but especially to edit. Here’s a list of music that became important to me when working on The Union of Synchronized Swimmers. I now realize it contains only instrumental pieces and songs whose language I don’t speak, which I think goes nicely with the theme of living in the middle of a foreign language, a central theme of the novel.
Whenever I have tried to listen to songs in English or Finnish, I always end up shutting down the music as it places itself between me and the writing. But instrumental music and music in a foreign language is great to set up a certain atmosphere in which writing and editing take place.
Shigeru Umebayashi: Yumeji's theme
I discovered the movies of Wong Kar-wai when writing this book. I would then play the movie soundtracks while working. This song, from In the Mood For Love, became one of my favorites. The violin is amazing: how it runs through this long piece, unfurling towards something special, like those secret encounters in the movie.
Chico Buarque: Construção
I first discovered Chico Buarque as a writer: his novel My German Brother hit me like rare books do, it made me realize something about time and structure… anyway, then I started to listen to Buarque’s music. “Construção” became my favourite – I love Portuguese language though I can’t speak it yet. This song was written in the '70s, in the time of military dictatorship in Brazil, where Buarque had returned after being exiled in Italy. A fact I learnt when reading about this song, and which creates a nice connection to the Olympics happening in my novel: “Construção” was played in the 2016 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in Rio de Janeiro.
Keith Jarrett: Summertime
I love to watch videos of Keith Jarrett playing this song: he’s so passionate, barely sitting on the stool but instead playing with his whole body, there’s something almost erotic about what’s going on between him and the piano. And the combination of playfulness and seriousness in this song is something so special. Listening to it while writing feels like something cool, something unexpected is going to happen.
Cesária Evora: Sodade
This is a Cape Verdean song written in the 1950s by Armando Zeferino Soares, but I guess it’s best known by Cesária Évora (from her 1992 album Miss Perfumado). “Sodade” describes the nostalgia experienced by Cape Verdeans emigrants who have been seafarers and emigrants for centuries. It repeats the question: Ken mostro-b es kaminhu longe? / Who showed you the faraway path?
Sona Jobarteh: Gambia
Sona Jobarteh is a singer and composer from Gambia. Her main instrument, the Kora, is one of the most beautiful instruments I’ve heard. It’s a long-necked string instrument played in countries like Guinea, Mali, Senegal and the Gambia. Kora playing runs in families, passing from generation to generation. Jobarteh’s music combines tradition of her cultural heritage with contemporary music. This song is a tribute to Gambia and its people; it says (according to a translation I found online) for if you forget your roots, you turn your back on who you are.
Erik Satie: Jazzopédie
I used to play piano as a kid, including some Erik Satie, the French composer and pianist who shocked twentieth-century French music. Listening to him takes me back to those childhood days, when life was really full of fiction and stories. Maybe that’s why listening to Satie while writing creates a nice mood: creative, a bit nostalgic, imaginative and boundless. This song, “Jazzopédie,” is calm and pensive, yet advances through little surprises; like a story impossible to predict.
Sílvia Pérez Cruz: Cucurrucucú Paloma
This song was originally written by the Mexican Tomás Méndez in 1954. It’s about lost love and its title refers to the call of the dove, which sings in the refrain. I first heard this song in Almodovar’s Talk to Her, sang by Caetano Veloso. But lately I’ve been listening to this version by the Spanish singer Sílvia Pérez Cruz, whose voice is really like that of a bird.
Faye Wong: Dreams (adaptation of The Cranberries)
Another song I discovered in Won Kar-wai (in his movie Chungking Express). Something familiar yet totally new: this song took me straight back to my teenage years when I used to love The Cranberries, yet it is an entirely different song, sung in Cantonese, a language of which I understand even less than of Portuguese. And Wong’s voice is so bright and strong. Also the fact that the song comes up in the movie scene where one of the main characters is playing with a miniature airplane in the room of the man she’s in love with – after letting herself in secretly, knowing the man isn’t home and wanting to be close to him – just makes the song even better. Somehow I like this adaptation of “Dreams,” though I don’t speak a word of Chinese, even more than the original. Like Borges says: “The original is unfaithful to the translation.”
Cristina Sandu was born in 1989 in Helsinki to a Finnish-Romanian family who loved books. She studied literature at the University of Helsinki and the University of Edinburgh, and speaks six languages. She currently lives in the UK and works as a full-time writer. Her debut novel, The Whale Called Goliath (2017), was nominated for the Finlandia Prize. The Union of Synchronised Swimmers won the Toisinkoinen Literary Prize and will be her first book to be published in English.
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