Prologue: El columpio de la vida/On the Swing of Life
The news that day in the spring of 1961 was not unexpected. But for Panart Records founder Ramón Sabat, it was the day the music died.
Even the most melancholy bolero could not have expressed the depth of Julia Riera Sabat’s despair during a time so lonely that she would give it a name: The heartbreaking year of 1961.
Julia was a native New Yorker, but she had been away from the city for almost twenty years. When she was an English major attending Barnard College and more so in that magical time after graduation, the Manhattan streets in winter had held romance and possibility. Now they were just another source of sadness.
Click here to listen to the soundtrack of the prologue while you read.