“Because somebody sits down on a chair and pays money and you have to show them the respect. “You have to do your best and look your best,” says Charo. For as wondrous as she is strumming a nylon string acoustic guitar, it’s equally as amazing how she balances in stilettos. She’s glamorous, yet still somehow able to traverse a whole stage in pinpoint heels. And Charo clings to that knowledge.įans of Charo will notice she’s always dressed to the nines. If we knew there would always be another show, it might not be so bad when one ends. What heightens these experiences, Charo says, is the simple idea of mortality itself. In this way, Charo experiences a mini death with each completed show, just as she feels a new regeneration with each one ahead. But it’s sad, it’s a sad feeling because that moment will never come back again.” And then you breathe and you say, if you’re lucky, okay, tomorrow I’ll find another job, another curtain will open up, another audience will applause. “When the curtain comes down,” she says, “you feel like, what’s next? It’s a feeling of loneliness, sadness. But afterward, like many other performers, Charo goes back to feeling small, even depressed. On stage, she feels the energy of some higher ambition, it courses through her. It’s like a glass of water after choking down a handful of salt. If not, to me the day was not worth it.”įor Charo, to play and perform means to engage with the thrill of the resource that is music. “If I don’t practice at least two hours a day,” Charo says, “I feel like one of those little dogs that makes a poo-poo. She has to perform, even if it’s alone in a rehearsal room. In this way, it’s both something she gives the world and something she gives herself.
But when a woman plays, you look at how she looks, how she moves, her dress.”Ĭharo says she gets her work ethic from her mother, who got it from her mother. Because when a man plays, you don’t look at him, you just listen. And in my case, you try to look cute at the same time on stage. But Charo was always at the front of the proverbial line. Many hear what to do, few follow up on it. But it was Charo’s own “DNA,” as she puts it, that allowed her to follow through on his instructions. It was he who first ingrained in her the need to practice and to do so regularly. Because I prepare myself like the Olympic athlete.”īefore she turned 10 years old, Charo (born María Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Baeza) had begun to play the guitar and train under the legendary player Andrés Segovia. I never was afraid of the stage, never had nerves. I feel so happy when the curtain goes up and when the show is over and the curtain falls down, I feel very lonely again.
#DOWN FOR THE THRILL LYRICS FOR FREE#
“I would work for free because I am entertaining myself, I am rejuvenating. “I don’t know why they pay me,” Charo tells American Songwriter. And all part of what she loves most to do: engage an audience and shine when doing so. It’s all part of the package, she’ll say. She cares about technique as much as she does about her looks.
Charo, who boasts a shapely silhouette and who entertains with as much verve and enthusiasm as any, is also a truly world-class six-string master. The instrument is of the people and she can make it truly sing. The energetic performer says she meets new friends through it, she rejuvenates her energy by practicing and playing it, and she experiences beauty through it.įor Charo, the guitar, especially, is what thrills her. For famed Spanish-born musician and entertainer Charo, music is much more akin to oxygen and water than it is to some petty piece of entertainment.