Daddy’s Girl (Hopeless Attempt not to Cry Listening to that Song) 2008 from Heta Kuchka on Vimeo.
I’ve always been a daddy’s girl. My father was mowing the grass in our little garden when he died. I was watching Buena Vista Social Club play at an outside Jazz Festival when the police called me. They were playing Chan Chan. It had been raining for a while and grass was covered in dark brown mud. I fell to my knees and grabbed the person standing nearest to me. It was a 19-year-old boy. I looked up, and all I could see around me were people’s butts happily swaying to the sound of the music as I was thinking to myself that right at this very moment, before the policeman on the other end of the phone can even finish his sentence, my life is going to be completely different than it was before he started to tell me that Daddy is dead. Whenever I hear the song, I start crying. Ten years later it still has a strong emotional impact on me. I play the song for the first time over and over trying not to cry.