 |
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
by Luis Rumbaut The bolero was born in Cuba’s eastern city of Santiago. Unlike some other genres, the bolero has been assigned a precise moment of creation: the composition of the first bolero, Tristezas, by Pepe Sánchez, in 1883 or a little later. Like other kinds of music, however, it was not born in a vacuum, unrelated to prior genres. Its origins go back—at least by name—to the Spanish bolero, a light dance in 3/4 time. Unexpectedly, it also derives in a way from the English country dance, which became known in French as contradanse. French colonists, escaping from the Haitian revolution across the straits from eastern Cuba, brought with them the music, which in Spanish became contradanza. From the Cuban contradanza, or simply danza, as the analogous forms are also called in Puerto Rico and Mexico, came the trova, the traditional song of the guitar-playing troubadour from the east of the island. The danza was also the basis of the habanera, which was so named not in Cuba, but in Europe, when the rhythm crossed the ocean. The first published habanera, La Pimienta, was written in 1836. In 1884, around the time that Sánchez writes his bolero, Sebastian Yradier’s La Paloma, a classic habanera, is becoming a hit in Mexico and in the U.S. The courtly and measured contradanza was transformed by the sounds of the island, where, at one point in the 1800s, the African population exceeded the Spanish and Creole population. At the beginning of the 20th Century, the very danceable and syncopated son was beginning its conquering march from—again—Santiago towards Havana, and even the more genteel sectors of society were assimilating as their own the new, danceable local rhythms. Against this background, with its mixture of danza, habanera, trova, and son, and other local, European, and African rhythms, emerges the bolero, taking the name of the Spanish form but changing its time signature to 2/4 and then to 4/4. Cuban musicologist Argeliers León asserts also that the style of strumming and of lead guitar playing surely was influenced by contact with Yucatecan sones as a result of renewed travel between Cuba and Mexico. The new bolero was different in ways other than the change in time signature. A mark of the African influence was the typical cinquillo, or five-note cluster, brought from Haiti, which originally defined the phrasing of the lyrics and later the arrangement of the song. Also new was the accompaniment on claves or maracas, and eventually bongos or conga drums. The bolero began as, and remains, a love song. It is, however, a danceable love song, a memory of sweet or bitter love, but with a swing. In popular terminology, there is a variant of the bolero called—redundantly—bolero tropical, which gives the song a livelier feeling, while keeping the same time, through the repeated strumming of chords within a measure after plucking a bass note. José "Pepe" Sánchez was born in Santiago in 1856. His melodic invention was taken up and reproduced by some of the most noted composers of early and mid-20th Century Cuba, including fellow santiagueros Miguel Matamoros, of Trío Matamoros fame, and Sindo Garay, the seminal composer and performer of trova. Among other stars who popularized the bolero were José Antonio Méndez, Benny Moré, Maria Teresa Vera, and César Portillo de la Luz. Once the bolero became known abroad, composers in two of Cuba’s neighbors, México and Puerto Rico, added their own versions and compositions, becoming integrally connected to the history and development of the bolero. The Costa Rican singer of rancheras, Chavela Vargas, adopted by Mexico, took up the bolero; later, Agustín Lara, composer of many of the best-known boleros, and the Trío Los Panchos, became synonymous with the music. In Puerto Rico, a parallel phenomenon took place with Rafael Hernández, Daniel Santos, and Bobby Capó, among others. But the bolero reaches beyond Mexico and the Caribbean to Colombia, Chile, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Brasil, and back to Spain. In Chile, Lucho Gatica, singer of urgently romantic ballads, and the duet of Sonia and Miryam, became also performers of boleros. Even in the U.S., Eydie Gorme and Vicky Carr found fame in the bolero. Carr, who was born Florencia Bisenta de Casillas Marinez Cardona in El Paso, Texas, began her career as a pop singer in English and gravitated eventually to Latin American songs, winning three Grammies with her recordings in Spanish. Cuban bandleader Antonio Machín, who emigrated to and made his name in the U.S., issued parallel recordings, Tributo al Bolero Mexicano and Tributo al Bolero Cubano. A slow-paced and romantic music, the bolero does not attract young performers today as it might have in the past. Still, in recent years, established and market-conscious performers like Luis Miguel and Ana Gabriel, in Mexico, and Gloria Estefan in the U.S., have returned to the bolero, while the three young men of Los Tri-O in Colombia have surprised many with their recreation of the style of Los Panchos—even with one of them wearing an earring. Before them, Peruvian Tania Libertad, settled in Mexico, drew a mass following with her renditions of boleros. Just as it derived from other genres that preceded it, the bolero evolved into or influenced the development of subsequent forms. A natural line of evolution leads from the bolero to the Cuban fílin ("feeling"), a blend of ballad, bolero, and jazz that was identified most with Elena Burke until her recent death, but also with performers such as Pablo Milanés. The Dominican bachata likely derives from the bolero. What is more, the English-speaking world was not exempt from being influenced by the bolero. As an example, it has been said that the beguine was the U.S.’s answer to the bolero, although the beguine comes from Martinique. In any case, it is not hard to relate the typical sound of a bolero to the music of Begin the Beguine or of Night and Day, big-band tunes composed at a time when the bolero had already grown into a similar format. The lyrics of the first of these hint at the source of their inspiration: "When they begin the beguine/ It brings back the sound of music so tender/ It brings back a night of tropical splendor/ It brings back a memory ever green...." Similarly on the other side of the ocean: fans of the Beatles may scoff at the notion that Paul McCartney wrote boleros, but they would be hard-pressed to categorize the music of Yesterday in terms other than a bolero. |
|
|
|
||||||
