Guajira
The Guajira was born in the Oriente of Cuba during the second half of the 19th century. This daughter of the Punto Guajiro is imbued with the folklore and characteristic elements of the music of Andalusia and the Canary Islands. Accompanied by a tiple (a small guitar with five strings or five pairs of strings), a guitar or a laúd (a lute with six pairs of strings played with a plectrum), the singer evokes the lifestyle and the rural environment, hence the name Música de los guajiros or Música guajira and simply Guajira, the name given to the inhabitants of the Cuban countryside. Later on, the instrumentation was completed with small percussion instruments such as maracas.
The Guajira has many similarities with the Punto Guajiro and the Criolla. Unlike the Punto Guajiro, which focuses on the text rather than the melody, the Guajira has a rhythmic beat.
Between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the Guajira found its way into the music played in the Cuban theater. The paternity of the Guajira is generally attributed to Jorge Anckermann Rafart, pianist, double bass player, composer and orchestra director with his piece “El arroyo que murmura” interpreted in 1899 in the play Toros y gallos by Gustavo and Francisco Robreño Puente.
Musically, the Guajira is a mixture of rhythms in 3/4 and 6/8. According to Cuban musicologist Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes, its first section is played in minor mode and its second part is in major mode. The harmonic structure is simplistic (tonic, subdominant and dominant). It always ends on the dominant. The improvisations sprinkled with conte-temps emphasize this musical sobriety. Exclamations, sometimes punctuating the solos, encourage the musicians and revive the rhythm.
The texts of La Guajira evoke the country environment in a bucolic and idealized way, sometimes in a nostalgic tone. They praise in general the beauty of the countryside and the way of life of the peasants but can also evoke the beauty of the woman and the love that one can carry to her. Generally, the text is presented in the form of verses that rhyme, often on the model of the decima.
Later, in the mid-1930s, José Guillermo ‘Portabales’ Quesada del Catillo, guitarist and singer, developed a more sophisticated and less rustic Guajira, the Guajira de salón. He contributed to make this musical genre known on the American continent. Other authors like Berto González or Ramón Veloz will join this Guajira.
The Guajira of the 1930s
The repertoire of the Guajira, in its original form, fell into oblivion over time, especially because of the birth of the Guajira-Son. This musical form, born between the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, is also called Guajisón or more simply the ambiguous name of Guajira. It is the result of a mixture between the Montuna (Oriental Son) and the original Guajira, influenced by the internationally known song “Guajira guantanamera” (The Peasant Woman of Guantánamo) granted to José ‘Joseíto’ Fernández Diaz in 1993 by the Cuban Supreme Court. The musicologist Natalio Galán also indicates an influence of the pasacallo of the Bolero.
A member of the sexteto Los dioses del amor of Raimundo Pía y Riveiro, ‘Joseíto’ Fernández made his debut on the airwaves of 2BX in 1925 and performed his first compositions, including the one that would become the “Guajira Guantanamera”, which went unnoticed. Joseíto Fernández’ song, which was constantly evolving thanks to his improvisations, was first broadcast and then became a real success on Radio Lavín, also known as Radio CMCO, where it was played with Alejandro Riveiro’s Orquesta Típica from 1936 onwards (other sources indicate 1935 and Joseíto Fernández remembers that it was “around 1934”). Joseíto’ Fernández finds different verses every day.
Joseíto Fernández provides in his life different versions about the circumstances and the date of the creation of the song. For example, he explained that he was working in a radio station where he met a young woman from Guantánamo. She would bring him a snack for lunch and stay to talk with him. One day she caught him with another woman and angrily snatched the sandwich and left. To make up for the situation, he dedicated the chorus to this “guajira guantanamera”. The public liked the song, which they wrote to him and called him on the radio to show their appreciation for his improvisation. Then he decided to sing this way, starting with “guantanamera…”. Thus, one day it could be “guajira guantanamera”, another “guajira vueltabajera”, the next “guajira holguinera” or “guajira camagüeyana”… but never “guajira santiaguera”.
From 1941, ‘Joseíto’ Fernández used to improvise, to the tune of Guajira guantanamera, comments on the news of the day in the program El suceso del día in the radio CMQ. On September 12, 1940, Joseíto Fernández recorded for RCA Victor the titles “A mi madre”, “La mujer cubana”, “Mi orquesta” and “Mi biografía” with Alberto Beque’s band. In the place where the style of the song is usually indicated, he mentions “Guajira Guantanamera”. In 1941, Joseíto con su Orquesta Típica recorded “Guarda barreras” and another version of “Mi biografía”. These two songs are subtitled “Guantanamera” and include the famous refrain “guantanamera, guajira guantanamera”. In 1943, the song became the closing credits of the radio program El suceso del día.
Shortly after, Alfredo Valdés recorded a version in New York. But it was not until 1965 that the song became an international success and an emblem of Cuba, when Pete Seeger interpreted it using the lyrics of the poet José Martí’s Verso sencillos, adapted in the 1950s by Julián Orbón. The Sandpipers covered the song the same year and it reached the top 10 of the American and English charts. Many other singers, such as Leo Brouwer (1961) or Joe Dassin (1966), later covered this standard.
The rhythmic signature of the Guajira-Son is 4/4. Its tempo is generally slow. Its structure is simple and often of type A-B-A-B or A-B-B-A. Gradually, its instrumentation is enriched by a double bass and sometimes a piano.
Like many Cuban rhythms, the Guajira will be combined with various rhythms like the Pilón to give the Guajira-Pilón or with the Shake to form the Guajira-Shake.
The origin of the Guajira is disputed
Joseíto Fernández’ authorship of the “Guajira guantanamera” is disputed, especially since his explanations about the creation of the song are confused and diverse. Musicologists rather attribute it to the tresero Herminio ‘El Diablo’ García Wilson from Guantánamo. In July 1929, he was working in the street when one of his friends, ‘Pipi’ Corona, saw a beautiful woman and addressed her a “piropo”. She did not appreciate it and rejected the gallant compliment. The latter exclaimed: “what did she imagine this guajira (peasant) guantanamera? El Diablo’ Wilson then looked for a melody to underline this interjection. That same night, he played it at a party at Silverio ‘Toto’ Bosch Dubois’s house with Chito Latamblé and ‘Pipi’ Corona. Later, within the Cuarteto Cubano formation, ‘Pipi’ Corona, together with Juan Limonta, Rigoberto ‘Maduro’ Hechavarría and Joaquín Garcia, would have played it in Santiago, Palma Soriano, Bayamo and Havana, as a presentation theme for the group.
In the capital, this Son would have been discovered by José ‘Cheo’ Marcelino Diaz Marquetti and would have converted it into Guajira-Son: the first part in Guajira and the second with the Montuno of the Son created by ‘El Diablo’ Wilson. Only afterwards, ‘Joseíto’ Fernández would have started to sing it with his own contributions.
El Diablo’ Wilson claimed the paternity of the chorus of “Guajira guantanamera” but during the trial that took place in 1993, the Supreme Court of Cuba attributed it to Joseíto’ Fernández. The decision was made not on the basis of copyright, but on the time limits for claiming it, which were too long under Cuban law for a property claim on material goods. On the other hand, ‘El Diablo’ Wilson was accompanied during his trial by the musicologist Santiago Moreaux Jardines because of his advanced age. The latter later admitted that he did not want to damage the image of Joseíto Fernández, a national figure who had died by then, but that he also considered the work “Guajira Guantanamera” to be collective, the original author being El Diablo Wilson.
Spanish version
Through the process that musicologists call ida y vuelta (back and forth), Guajira reached the Spanish coast at the end of the 19th century. Manuel Silverio Franconetti added elements of Flamenco to create a variant that he was the first to call Guajira. Later, Curro Dulce, Don Antonio Chacón García or Manuel ‘Manuel Escacena’ Jiménez Centeno accentuated these Flamenco features.
José ‘Pepe Marchena’ Tejada Marín takes back this Guajira, temporarily forgotten, in the years 1920 to enrich his melody. He engraves more than a dozen titles like “Contigo me caso indiana” or “Es la mulata un tarrón de azúcar”. Juanito Valderrama Blanca, Jacinto Antolín Gallego Almadén, Dolores ‘la Niña de la Puebla’ Jiménez Alcántara and more recently Luís ‘Luís de Córdoba’ Pérez Cardoso produced a profusion of titles of this form of Flamenco song.
Special thanks to Julien and his ultimate resource on cuban music and dance – this page is merely a translation.
