VIVA ESPANA AND MEXICO
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Viva Espana and Mexico The current rebirth of interest in Latin-American dance music, rumba, samba, mambo salsa, and other neo- African variants, has its...
Viva Espana and Mexico
The current rebirth of interest in Latin-American dance
music, rumba, samba, mambo salsa, and other neo-
African variants, has its roots in the 1920s or even
earlier. During the first decades of the last century the
Argentinian tango and its habanera hybrids had been
popularised throughout Europe and by 1930 the
recording and broadcasting industries were exploiting
the commercial possibilities of other dance rhythms
from other southern American countries, Brazil,
Mexico and Cuba. In the United States parallel
processes of evolution continued under the general
heading of 'commercial dance', first through the 'King
Of Kitsch' Xavier Cugat and Perez Prado and, later,
with jazz and Afro, and, later even, reggae-overlap,
successively, by Tito Puente, Machito, Charlie Parker
and, in the late 1980s, by 'Miami's Golden Girl' Gloria
Estefan. From the early 1920s onwards Europe,
however, and specifically Paris, saw a sophisticating
influx of Latin musicians, in particular several Cubans,
including Ernesto Lecuona (1896-1963) and Don
Marino Barreto (1909-1997). In London, Lecuona set a
benchmark by his first visit with his Cuban Boys (in
1934), while Barreto subsequently established himself
in the British capital, to be followed by the part-Scots,
part-black Venezuelan, Trinidad-born Edmundo Ros
(born 1910), and the Scottish Roberto Inglez (alias
Robert Inglis, 1919-1978) and others.
As in other musical genres deriving in smaller or
greater part from folk-dance sources, it can often be
difficult to differentiate the authentically Latin from the
spurious, or the truly traditional from the commercial
counterfeiting of Tin Pan Alley, however catchy the
tune. Into the latter category we can, however, with
confidence place Chiquita Banana, a 1938 creation by
Len Mackenzie, Garth Montgomery and bandleader Bill
Wirges, by Maxwell-Wirges Publications, New York.
And while the ballad (cancion) Granada, published by
Peer International Corporation, New York, in 1932, was
featured by vocalists as diverse as Mario Lanza and
Claudio Villa, its indisputably mock-heroic semblance
conceals its genuinely Mexican origins. Its composer
Agustin Lara (1900-1970), a native of Tlacotalpan,
spent most of his working life in Mexico City.
Musically self-taught, he earned his living playing in
Mexican brothels and speakeasies, where the
experience of having his face slashed in a brawl with a
woman reputedly inspired his 'paean to womanhood,
Morucha', His other successes included Rosa, Tus
pupila, Gotas de amor and, even more famously Mujer.
La raspa (literally either 'shrew' or 'scolding') may
be traceable to the early flamenco, El raspao, whereas
under its original title Jarabe tapatio, Mexican Hat
Dance derives from a rhythm of Arabic origin
traditionally performed by the inhabitants of
Guadalajara. This last was reportedly first danced in
1790 at the Coliseo in Mexico City, but its earliest
publication copyright in Mexico dates from 1919 and it
later became even better known through a 1933 New
York re-publication, in an arrangement by F. A.
Partichela. The earliest known printed version of Cielito
lindo dates from 1919 and although no composer or
lyricist were credited, its time-honoured refrain 'Ay, ay,
ay, ay, canta y no llores' has a certain folksy ring to it.
In this context the musicologist Otto Meyer-Serra cites
Querino Mendoza y Cortez, who claimed authorship
when applying for copyright in 1929. Others,
unspecified, pre-locate the tune, if not the words, to the
1830s.
Although variously credited as a Mexican folk-song
La Cucaracha (literally 'cockroach beetle') dates back
to about 1885, or possibly earlier. With its companion
La Valentina, it was one of two songs of the 1914-1915
Revolution published simultaneously, in Mexico City,
in 1916. Its title refers to 'La Cucaracha', a female
protagonist of the Mexican struggles, and indeed in
1934 it was used as a theme-tune, billed as 'a fox-trot by
Hawley Ades [with] American Adaptation by Juan Y.
D'Lorah' and published by Irving Berlin, Inc., for the
film Viva Villa (MGM, produced by Selznick and partly
directed by Howard Hawks and dubbed '1001 nights of
glorious romantic adventure', with a plot based on the
life of the revolutionary Pancho Villa, portrayed by
Wallace Beery). That same year another vocal version
appeared, with lyrics by Stanley Adams, by Edward B.
Marks & Co. and in 1935 one of many subsequent
treatments (words by Carl Field, for M. M. Cole
Publishing) made its first appearance in Chicago.
Although perhaps better known nowadays through
the lyrics of the 1960 Solomon King updating She
Wears My Ring, La golondrina was in its original
version an inspired cancion de exilio, in style very much
the companion of La paloma, which it predated by
several years. It was the work of Narciso Serradell
(1943-1910), a native of Alvarado, near Vera Cruz in
Mexico, who wrote it for a competition, in 1862.
Serradell was subsequently incarcerated for
revolutionary activities and published the song years
later, to his own French lyrics, while working as a
teacher, in exile in France. Later still it appeared in a
Spanish translation by Francisco Martinez de la Sierra.
While most familiar to modern ears through the pop
revivals of Ricky Valance, Los Paraguayos and others,
La bamba (literally 'black, i.e. Afro-Caribbean,
woman') is probably the most famous of all the
huapangos from the central Bajo and Gulf coastal
regions of eastern Mexico which, originally scored for
guitars harps and percussion, are heard to best
advantage in and around Vera Cruz.
Not surprisingly three selections are included by the
prolific Lecuona. A highly accomplished pianistcomposer
whose lighter output for film and radio to
some extent obscured his true stature, Ernest Casado
Lecuona was a native of Guanabacoa, Cuba. Born into a
musical background, the precocious Ernesto gave his
first recital at five, published his first composition at
eleven and at seventeen graduated from the Havana
Conservatorio Nacional, taking first prize and gold
medal. After making his New York solo debut as a
pianist-composer at the Aeolian Hall in 1914, he
embarked on a career as a recitalist, continuing
compositional training with Joaquin Nin and, during the
early 1920s, with Maurice Ravel, in France. By the
decade's end he had 'gone commercial', however, and,
with his famous Cuban Boys dance outfit, alternating
white tie and tails with gaucho attire, made tours of
Europe, Latin America and the United States.
The bulk of Lecuona's estimated four hundred
compositions feature " 'white' peasant and Afro-Cuban
rhythms" and of these, Malaguena (published as a piano
solo by Edward B. Marks Music Co., New York, in
1929), his first international commercial song hit
'Siboney' (1929; penned as "a tribute to the Caribbean
Indians") and La Comparsa (1934) are among the best
remembered.
Peter Dempsey