In 1934, the character of Cri-Cri was created by one of Mexico’s greatest composers, Francisco Gabilondo Soler, for his program on XEW, which is one of Mexico’s oldest radio stations. Soler would take on the persona of the singing cricket and sing fantastical, humorous, and cheerful stories. By the 1940s, his songs and stories grew so massively popular that Walt Disney approached Soler to buy the rights for the character. Disney wanted to bring Cri-Cri over to American audiences, and produce works featuring the singing cricket similar to the film The Three Caballeros. However, Soler famously refused his offer, as he was a firm believer that Cri-Cri’s legacy would be for Mexican children. But what is this legacy?

Francisco Gabilondo Soler was born in 1907 in Orizaba, Veracruz. The stories he read in his youth from the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, and Aesop’s fables inspired many of his own stories. For instance, many of Soler’s stories often feature anthropomorphic animals. 

It was on October 15, 1934 that Soler sang his fantastical songs on the radio for the first time. After his first few sessions, Soler created the character of Cri-Cri following a suggestion from his art director. Soler was originally granted a 15 minute program on XEW station that was only intended to last for a few weeks. Instead, it spread like wildfire, filling a previously untouched niche for children’s entertainment. It was such a hit that the program lasted for almost 27 years, and the name Cri-Cri (which became synonymous with Soler) became a household name. Cri-Cri’s legacy has lasted beyond the end of the program in 1961, and even beyond Soler’s death in 1990. 

When he sang, children listened. For a brief time, they could be transported to the  whimsical world of Soler’s creation filled with lovable characters and unforgettable songs. As a child growing up in Mexico, I distinctly remember doing one of my kindergarten shows to the Cri-Cri song “Caminito de la Escuela,” which tells of different animals making their way to school (one of my personal favourites). It was adorable! On road trips we would sometimes put on Cri-Cri DVDs and my whole family would sing his songs. To put it into perspective, my father was born in 1966, well after Soler’s program ended, and he can still sing his songs word for word. Cri-Cri has had a cricket-y grip on over four generations! 

Soler wrote 228 songs, which varied greatly in style and genre, but all captured the essence of traditional Mexican music. Soler uses the Tango in “Che Araña”, polka in “El Ratón Vaquero,” the waltz in “La Muñeca Fea,” and Son Cubano in “Cucurumbé.” The song “Cucurumbé” pays homage to the place of his birth — the state of Veracruz. This state is one of great historical importance in Mexico, and is also a state with one of the highest Afro-Mexican and Afro-descendant  populations in the country. My own grandfather and his side of the family are Afro-descendants from Veracruz, and I distinctly remember him singing and dancing to “Cucurumbé” and other Cri-Cri songs with his grandkids. It is very likely he sang these songs with my mom and her siblings too, and as he has been a teacher for most of his life, he would be familiar with the sounds of Cri-Cri around the classrooms. 

However, it is important to note that like other media aimed at children at the time, such as the works of Dr. Seuss and Walt Disney, some of Soler’s works contained racist and classist imagery reminiscent of the time. This is evident in his songs “Negrito Sandia,” “Métete Teté”” and “Chinescas,” which contain blatant colourism, racist caricatures, and tragically normalized violence towards Black bodies that stems from Mexico’s history of colonialism. Old performances of songs like “Métete Teté” were often conduits for minstrelsy. These songs are often forgotten amongst Soler’s repertoire, or in the case of the generally well-known“Negrito Sandia,” have not been recognized as harmful until recently, in the past decade or so.

However, Soler’s grandson Gabilondo Vizcaíno stated in a 2017 interview that he remembered his grandfather didn’t share the racial prejudices of the people of his time, and that his aforementioned song, “Cucurumbé” reflected this. The song tells us the story of Cucurumbé, a little girl who wished to lighten her skin with the ocean foam. But a fish with a hat swims up to her and exclaims that there is no need for that, for she with her black skin, is beautiful the way she is. Gabilondo Vizcaíno recounts that Soler deeply loved Veracruz and its people. Soler is remembered fondly, by my family, by Veracruz, and by most of Mexico, as many of us have memories of family and childhood attached to his music. Although throughout his life’s work, Soler created a space for children to explore their imaginations, even great composers like him are not free from accountability. The impact of his harmful works should not be excused because of all his positive contributions to musical traditions. It is important to face, recognize, teach, and remember the harmful works he created that helped perpetuate racism, regardless of Soler’s association with childhood innocence.

One thing remains true, and that is that Cri-Cri is part of Mexico’s cultural and musical history, as well as many of our personal stories. I, for one, will forever hold in my heart the memory of laughing and pretending to howl with my jaded, Gen-X father, while we sing about a dog with a tooth ache in “El Perrito.” It is these moments of connection between generations that I cherish, and where Cri-Cri has carved his music into our memories. I don’t know if a decade from now school children will still perform “Caminito de la Escuela” like I did. Or maybe they will. I do hope that if Soler’s music and legacy carries on, we would do right by history and not sweep his harmful works under the rug and remember Cri-Cri as he was.

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This interview has been shortened and edited for clarity.

Frida Sofía Morales Mora and Eliana Freelund for The McGill Daily (MD): What exactly are the goals of the McGill Classics Play? How did this whole thing start?

E. Weiser (EW): The McGill Classics play was started by Professor Lynn Kozak back in 2011 with the goal of integrating theatre back into classics. Theatre was a huge part of classical literary tradition, so this was a way to revitalize that. It’s also our goal to make the plays we put on accessible to a general public which might not have as much knowledge about these stories.

Audrey Michel (AM): We’ve also seen a bit of a shift in the past two years in how the McGill Classics Play operates. We’re encouraged to put our own creative spin on these stories rather than just directly translate what’s on the page to the stage. You can definitely see this with our play this year – it’s very different from the original text!

MD: What was the reasoning behind choosing this particular story? Why is Homer’s Odyssey still relevant in 2023?

AM: As E. mentions in our program, we are both haunted by Odysseus. We wanted to give space for many different areas of interpretation. This all came as a response to a very personal reckoning with the text.

EW: The themes of the Odyssey come back again and again in popular culture. Odysseus’s archetype as the wily trickster, the clever man who can escape from any situation – this trope comes back all the time. It’s the same thing with the idea of the Odyssean voyage home. These themes are ongoing and are constantly being reinterpreted in modern media.

MD: The form of this particular play is very unique and comedic! What made you choose a gameshow format? Why Ithacan Idol?

EW: We have a policy that everyone who wants to get involved in the McGill Classics Play can get involved. This usually means that we have to be pretty strategic in how we structure things, though, in order to make sure that everyone gets the chance to shine. So, we just thought, why not go camp?

AM: The concept of the game show is actually not irrelevant to the Odyssey. It goes straight back to the ancient tradition of presenting these stories during events such as festivals, where everyone puts their own twist on a given story and competes against one another to determine who has the best version.

EW: And in a way the contestants in our play are recreating the contest of the bow in the Odyssey, where the competitors compete to see who can get Penelope’s attention.

MD: In your program you define the ancient Greek term polytropos – to have many (poly-) manners or ways (-tropos). How is this concept relevant to your play?

AM: That term is basically an encapsulation of why we are haunted by Odysseus. It comes from the first line of the Odyssey: “Tell me, Muse, about the polytropos man.” It calls into question the idea of identity itself. In the text, this refers to Odysseus’s identity as a husband, as a father, and as a former soldier. This also applies on a metaliterary level: Is Odysseus a criminal? Is he a refugee? Is he someone we should sympathize with? There are just so many layers and so many variables.

MD: When we saw the play, both of us agreed that the Polyphemus scene depicting colonial violence was both incredibly moving and very difficult to watch. Can you explain the thought process behind writing this scene?

EW: When you think of this scene more simply, it’s basically this: someone rolls off onto your island, eats your shit, attacks you, and then  leaves. The thing is, in the Odyssey we get the version told by Odysseus, where Polyphemus is not painted in a good light simply because he doesn’t understand Greek customs and traditions. Polyphemus is othered – he is one-eyed, he doesn’t speak “proper” Greek, he isn’t familiar with Greek hospitality customs (xenia). According to Odysseus’s version of the story, that gives him permission to invade Polyphemus’s home. This is the part in the Odyssey, especially from a modern perspective, where you see the biggest pitfall of the hero. Because he is not a hero in this scene; he is just a colonizer.

AM: It’s important to recognize that colonization was going on during antiquity. Of course it looked very different, but it’s important that we talk about this now, especially because these narratives were used to justify later colonization. During this time, people were trying to define what it meant to be Greek. And to Odysseus, it seems that to be Greek is to not be what he would have considered “barbarian.” The tension in this scene is essentially, “you don’t look like us, you don’t respect my customs, you don’t speak like us.” 

EW: The part in our play where Polyphemus is holding his lamb and laments to the audience is taken directly from the text. So you have this painting of him as a devastated farmer who just lost his pet. And then you cut to Odysseus boasting over the fact that he’s just taken Polyphemus’ most prized lamb.

AM: In a way, it’s just twisting what he’s really known for the most – his trickster nature – and turning it into cruelty.

MD: How did the actors portraying Odysseus and Polyphemus feel when acting out this scene? It must have been very difficult emotionally. 

Thea S. (TS): Portraying Polyphemus required a lot of vulnerability on my part. As a Lebanese person, as a person of colour, as a person whose country is constantly affected by external forces, this scene really helped me rethink the struggles my country has to deal with. Here it’s a different framing: there are different characters, different forces, but the elements are still there. The part where Polyphemus gets scared and asks “who are you?” and “what did you say your name was?” really affected me. He gets defensive; he tries to defend himself. Peoples who have been colonized are often depicted as weaker, and the narrative is often that they were colonized because they were unable to fight back. I think it’s important to remember that that’s an unfair way to perceive these events in history. Nothing about colonization should ever be justified. This narrative of the weaker versus the stronger – it’s not real. It’s an illusion created by the oppressors. 

Gabrielle Gaston (GG): I had a difficult time acting in this scene in a different way. I’m playing a colonizer; I’m playing a villain. And at the same time I am fully aware of my positionality in this scene – as a white person, as a settler. I’m aware of the power dynamics that are in place, not only the privilege that I have in my day to day life in Canada, but also the power dynamics in the scene. I’m not only older than Thea, but I am a white person, and she is a person of colour. I know that she is in a more vulnerable state here, and there are a lot of really intense moments in that scene. I really wanted to make sure that we established a relationship of trust while working on the play together so that she could be as comfortable as possible. I wanted her to be able to tell me when something was too much. The most important thing to me was that she would feel safe.

MD: We are currently in the middle of Black History Month. Was there a conscious decision to put on the play during this month? How is the content of the play relevant to Black history?

GG: Although it wasn’t a conscious decision to put on the play during Black History Month, I think that the content is very much relevant to Black history. The way that E. and Audrey wrote and directed the play, specifically with the scene depicting colonial violence, speaks to the ongoing effects of colonization. In a play that is so campy, we were told that that scene had to be completely sober. It was very important for us to convey the weight of that scene – this is not something that’s over; it’s something that is still going on. Antiquity is effectively the foundation of Western civilization. It’s important to note that these traditions carry on, even though, as Audrey said, colonization looked different back then. These stories, these traditions, these narratives – they’ve shaped so much of Western culture. The transatlantic slave trade, the colonization of the African continent – these things have been catastrophically traumatic on a generational level. And whether or not Odysseus really existed, the idea of him – the idea of this OG colonizer figure in Odysseus has persisted throughout Western culture. The themes of domination and colonization in the Odyssey still exist to this day – and their effects can still be felt among Black people and on the African continent. I think it’s important to shift the narrative of how stories of colonization are told, to a place where the white person isn’t the hero. 

EW: Classics have historically been used to justify white supremacy. It’s incredibly important to not perpetuate that narrative. We don’t need another Odysseus-the-hero narrative – it was time to tell a different story.

TS: The medium of storytelling is really powerful. For the liberation of the oppressed, it is vital to keep the stories of the victims alive. It’s important for the truth to be heard – it’s necessary for justice, and it’s necessary for healing to start.

MD: The play remains open-ended as to who exactly Odysseus was. What does Odysseus mean to each of you?

EW: For me, Odysseus is all of these interpretations at once. You can’t distill the connotations his name has down to a single source.

AM: I think Odysseus is a question about who I want to be. His story about wandering, looking for home, looking for belonging – it resonates with all of us. But this story also asks us, what are you going to do in that situation? How do you want to be remembered, how are you going to treat people?

GG: To me, Odysseus is more of a concept than a real person. He’s kind of transcended being a real man because of the many ways he’s been interpreted and how they build off of each other. 

TS: I think Odysseus is very much a multi-faceted character. As Gab said, he really is more of a concept than a person. There are so many perspectives on his character, but I think it’s important not to get lost in one or two interpretations. Instead, we should look at every aspect of him in a way that leaves room for critical thinking and for nuance. 

If you are interested in being a part of McGill Classics Play, proposals for its 2024 production are currently being held. For further information, contact lynn.kozak@mcgill.ca.

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