Don’t teach a health unit without this song

Somewhere in Spanish 1 or 2 there usually comes up a unit that has something to do with health.  I even have a unit in my AP course (with units I wrote myself) called “Cuidándo a mí” with health-related issues.  In your Spanish health-related unit you really ought to include the song “Bilirrubina” por Juan Luis Guerra.

The song includes a lot of present tense and a lot of wonderful health-related vocabulary like fiebre and aspirina with super-useful verbs like quita with object pronouns.

If you want to delve further, there’s an interesting discussion on Word Reference about the use of the word bilirrubina. I love the WR forums-that’s how I found out that in this collaboration by Juan Luis with Diego Torres, Torres makes a reference to the Bilirrubina song in the end (I’d heard the song but hadn’t noticed that!) and when I listened for it, I heard him reference another of Guerra’s big hits, Ojalá que llueva café. Amazing what you’ll learn on the yellow brick road.