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Alma Madrigal, a.k.a.
Dos Oruguitas is the first song I wrote from beginning to end in Spanish.
Im someone whos pretty bilingual, but English is dominant.
I can carry on a conversation with anyone in Spanish.
Stephen Sondheim says it best: Content dictates form.
And this was a moment inEncantowhere were getting Abuelas tragic, foundational backstory.
It felt appropriate that it would be in Spanish.
A lot of songwriting is the process of elimination of whatshouldntbe.
I was inspired by some of the visuals coming out of the animation department.
I thought,What if the folk song has these two caterpillars who are in love?
Who have to separate and they dont know why and they dont want to.
But they have to.
And also the painful separation that were seeing in front of us onscreen.
That leads you to Spanish as well becauseoruguitais an infinitely more beautiful word thancaterpillar.
And two, I really just had my Spanish-language thesaurus next to me.
A lot of what limits me is just vocabulary the right word for the right moment.
I just chipped away at it bit by bit.
You should keep going.
Once I hit on the metaphor, the rest happened very quickly because the metaphor works on multiple levels.
The characters are all holding on too tight: thats the story of whats happening with the family.
This is not a family thats falling apart because they are mad at each other or hate each other.
They love each other.
The song doesnt have to do all the work in a very real sense.
So you dont need a literal translation of whats happening to understand the story.
I think of that opening sequence in PixarsUp.
You see an entire marriage and life in about nine minutes.
There are no lyrics underlining that.
The song feels like a lullaby.
It starts like a lullaby but gets progressively more traumatic.
Before the song existed, they had temped in some folkloric guitar music.
My pitch was,This shouldnt be Abuela singing the story.
This is the folk song that accompanies what were seeing.
There are so many gorgeous ballads that come out of Colombia.
Musically, Dos Oruguitas is very simple.
Its this descending bass line.
Theres a little movement at the end of the phrase.
I was listening to songs byJoan Manuel Serrat,Jobim.
I was listening to songs like Cielito Lindo or Guantanamera.
You feel like no one wrote those.
That they just always existed inside of us.
