The Guajira between Cuba and Spain : 137

Peter Manuel The Guajira between Cuba

and Spain: A Study in
Continuity and Change

The study of the movements and transfor-

mations of musical forms across time, space, and social contexts, although
long a basic consideration of music history, has acquired fresh significance
and analytical thrust in recent decades. Both the interest in such studies
and their theoretical orientations have been enhanced by the emergence
of globalization studies and the fresh appreciation of the ways that musical
forms can be rearticulated and resignified as they move between different
places, periods, and social strata. In this article I attempt to schematize
some of the formal continuities and changes involved in a particularly com-
plex set of interrelated genres, which can be seen to constitute various
efflorescences, or adaptations, of Cuban campesino music, or what could be
called the guajira complex of musical forms.
In the intricate world of circular musical exchanges between Old and
New Worlds, those between Cuba and Spain have particular historical depth
and richness. Among these interactions, especially outstanding in their fer-
tility and abundance are the musics in one way or another inspired by
música guajira, or music of guajiros, a Cuban term for small farmers of pre-
dominantly Hispanic descent. At the generative core of this complex of
genres lies the punto cubano, which, in its most characteristic and relevant
forms, comprises certain distinctive ways of singing verses, predominantly
in the ten-line décima form, with standardized melodic and accompanimental
patterns. These patterns appear to have coalesced from Spanish-derived
elements by the nineteenth century and have since continued to flourish in
their particular milieus. In the latter 1800s the punto inspired a Spanish
popular-song genre called guajira, which flourished, in different forms, in
zarzuela theater and in commercial flamenco contexts, constituting a major
cante de ida y vuelta, or song-form of the “departure and return,” that is,

Latin American Music Review, Volume 25, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2004

© 2004 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819

01Manuel 137 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 138 : Peter Manuel

between Spain and the New World. Around the turn of the century, a
parallel although distinct urban song-form, also called guajira, emerged in
Cuban music theater. In the 1930s, as this early theatrical guajira declined
in popularity, a thoroughly distinct and more durable form of guajira
emerged in Cuba, with other striking parallels in Spain.
Taken retrospectively, this set of genres, together with their historical
forerunners in Spain, constitutes a musical family of considerable vari-
ety and complexity. Fortunately for analytical purposes, the guajira com-
plex has not been neglected by scholars. The collaborative two-volume
work La música entre Cuba y España (1998, 1999) by Cuban scholars María
Teresa Linares and Victoria Eli, with Faustino Nuñez and María de los
Ángeles Alfonso Rodríguez, constitutes one important study, which cov-
ers certain aspects of the guajira complex. The evolution of the Cuban
punto is further explored in Linares’s El punto cubano (1999) and Natalio
Galán’s little-known but remarkable Cuba y sus sones (1983). For their
part, peninsular scholars Romualdo Molina and Miguel Espín have docu-
mented with great erudition the development of the guajira as a flamenco
cante, or song-type (1991). Meanwhile, the various Spanish and Cuban
contributors to Maximiano Trapero’s edited volumes on the décima (1994,
2001) shed much light on the evolution of the punto and, in particular, its
relation to Canary Island forms. Although the present author cannot
pretend to improve upon such writings, much may nevertheless remain
to be said on the subject of the guajira family. Some of these works (espe-
cially those of Linares, León, and Trapero) are collectors’ items, and
almost all are marked by a paucity of musical analyses and transcrip-
tions. More formidable a challenge is the way that the guajira complex
constitutes a musical entity of unwieldy dimensions and complications,
and yet one whose internal interrelationships do invite some sort of or-
ganizational scheme. It is such an over-arching perspective, with an
emphasis on formal continuities and discontinuities, that this essay hopes
to present. In the process I endeavor to suggest some broader perspec-
tives on the dynamics of musical continuity and change.

The Punto Cubano

The punto cubano, in its regional variants (and poorly documented his-
torical ones) can be regarded as the primary inspirational core of the set of
genres here presented as the guajira complex.1 These genres can all be seen
to rearticulate, with various transformations and external influences, aspects
of the individual distinctive formal features of the punto. Although the term
“punto” originally referred to guitar technique, in nineteenth-century Cuba,
as suggested above, it came to denote the family of styles of rendering

01Manuel 138 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 The Guajira between Cuba and Spain : 139

pre-composed or improvised verses, accompanied primarily by stringed

instruments such as guitar, laúd, and the mandolin-like bandurria. The His-
panic origins of the punto are overt in the use of these instruments, in the
genre’s association primarily with white or mulatto guajiros, and in the pre-
dominance of the ten-line décima verse form. This form, in its espinela vari-
ant, consists of octosyllabic lines in the rhyme scheme abbaaccddc. Although
visually resembling a mirrored structure, it is better regarded as an initial
abba quatrain (a redondilla), constituting a complete grammatical and con-
ceptual statement, which is then elaborated in the subsequent six lines; a
musical pause or interlude after the sixth line can lend the final four lines
(cddc) the character of a concluding redondilla. The décima itself, although
extant throughout much of Latin America, has been cultivated with particu-
lar enthusiasm in Cuba (and Puerto Rico), both as a literary genre and as a
vernacular idiom, whose popularity owes much to its role in folk music.
The punto has flourished primarily in the western half of Cuba, with
its more distinctive and to some extent polarized Hispanic- and African-
derived cultural traditions, rather than in the culturally and racially more
Creole eastern sector. As the predominant genre of música guajira, the
punto has flowered in several regional and idiosyncratic personal vari-
ants, distinguished by tune, typical accompaniment patterns, and such
features as the use of a non-décima estribillo, or refrain (e.g., in the punto
of Sancti Spíritus). A more general distinction exists between the me-
tered punto fijo (“fixed”) styles, and the punto libre (“free”) styles, whose
décimas are sung in free time, with punctuating metered instrumental
ritornellos in alternating bars of 6/8 and 3/4. The latter style (especially
the punto libre pinareño), with a single fairly standardized chordal and, to
some extent, melodic pattern, predominates in western Cuba and the
Havana area and has for some time constituted something of a pan-
regional norm (extending even to the Canary Islands, where it has been
cultivated by returning immigrants).
The most common punto libre setting is fairly standardized. Essentially,
it can be seen as having two bipartite melodic lines, labeled in example 1
as A (A1 and A2) and B (B1 and B2). The first two lines of the décima are
sung to A, and are often repeated once; lines 3–4 are then sung to B, lead-
ing to an instrumental ritornello (during which the poet, if improvising,
may create the rest of the décima in his mind). Lines 5–6 are then sung to A;
and after another ritornello, lines 7–10 are sung to melodies A and B. In-
strumental ritornellos precede and follow the décima.

verse line: 1 2 1 2 3 4 (rit.) 5 6 (rit.) 7 8 9 10 (rit.)

rhyme: a b a b b a a c c d d c
melody: A1 A2 A1 A2 B1 B2 A1 A2 A1 A2 B1 B2
A A B A A B

01Manuel 139 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 140 : Peter Manuel

Example 1. Typical punto libre melody

During the ritornellos, which are of indeterminate length, the guitarist typi-
cally strums a do-fa-sol (e.g., C-F-G) chordal ostinato (as shown in example
2) while the bandurria player performs single-note, often flashy improvisa-
tions. A horizontal hemiola (or sesquiáltera) pattern is evident in the ostinato
typically played on the clave sticks, suggesting alternating bars of 6/8 and
3/4, which could thus be counted 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-1-2-1-2.

Example 2. Punto libre ritornello pattern

Particularly significant for comparative purposes are the various fea-

tures that are more or less common to the main punto substyles. These
include the following:
1. A primarily syllabic rather than melismatic vocal style (as in the
traditional Spanish romance);

2. The tendency to divide the décima in the manner mentioned above,

with a pause or interlude after the fourth line;

3. Either implicit or explicit sesquiáltera, i.e., horizontal hemiola with

alternating bars of 6/8 and 3/4 (in the metered sections);

4. A generally descending melodic contour, from sol to sol an octave

lower, with a marked descent on the final syllable;

5. Mixolydian modality and modal harmony, in which both melody

and chordal ostinatos cadence on sol (here, G); the harmonic ca-
dences are typically described by musicologists as “on the domi-
nant,” but (as I have argued elsewhere) are better seen as reflecting
a dual tonicity in which do and sol chords (here, C and G) oscil-
late with relatively equal weight2 (see Manuel 2002).

01Manuel 140 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 The Guajira between Cuba and Spain : 141

The sesquiáltera and syllabic rendering are also evident in example 3, an

excerpt of a punto fijo from Sancti Spiritus3:

Example 3. Punto fijo excerpt

Texts of Cuban décimas are extremely diverse in subject matter, espe-

cially since the décima has flourished both as a sophisticated literary genre
and as a vernacular popular idiom, with works of poets like Francisco
Pobeda (1796–1881) and Juan Cristóbal Nápoles Fajardo (“El Cucalambé,”
1829–62) enjoying wide renown. Typical topics may include nationalism,
rural life, philosophy, love, and in the less common seguidilla form, ex-
tended narrative. In general, as Cuban musicologists have often observed
(e.g., Díaz Ayala 1981, 77; Carpentier [1946] 2001, 266), the richness of the
punto is to be sought more in its poetry than in its melodies. The latter
consist of a relatively limited set of stock tunes, which, like those of the
traditional romance, are reiterated over the decades with little innovation or
elaboration.

Sources of the Punto Cubano

Many aspects of the punto’s evolution are impossible to reconstruct, al-

though Galán, Linares, and Iberian musicologists have plausibly docu-
mented the trajectories of several of the genre’s distinguishing features.
Perhaps easiest of these to trace is the origin and spread of the décima itself.
After being fashioned and popularized by Spanish poet and musician
Vicente Espinel (1544–1644), the eponymous espinela form of décima came
to flourish among both peninsular literati and laymen. The décima’s promi-
nence in theatrical works by “Golden Age” playwrights like Lope de Vega
(1562–1635) and Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-81) helped bridge the
gap between the two social strata, and also popularized the tradition of
setting it to music. In the eighteenth century, the décima took root through-
out much of Latin America, and especially in Cuba and Puerto Rico. In
the following century, paradoxically, its popularity in Spain (including the
Canaries) came to be eclipsed by the vogue of other literary and musical
genres, especially (in the case of southern Spain and the Canaries) fandan-
gos, malagueñas, and folías, which did not, however, exert great influence in
the Americas. However, the décima retained enough vitality in the Canary
island of La Palma such that emigrants from there to western and central
Cuba appear to have intensified its cultivation in those regions. Ongoing

01Manuel 141 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 142 : Peter Manuel

ties with La Palma led to the transplanting of the punto cubano there, where
it survives, in diminished form, alongside other more distinctively local
décima-singing traditions (see, e.g., Trapero 1994).
While the origins of the punto cubano’s distinctive melodies, or tonadas,
have not been documented, other features have been plausibly traced, in
ways that may contribute to an appreciation of their historical trajectories
beyond the realm of the punto itself. Moorish roots have been postulated
for the practice of alternating solo vocal verses and instrumental interludes
(especially played on the ‘ud, ancestor of the laúd) (Siemens Hernández
1994). Other features, especially the Mixolydian modality, and the fre-
quent monophonic unison doubling of the voice on an accompanying
stringed instrument, can be seen as archaisms from the Renaissance or
even earlier. Particularly curious are the circuitous paths of features that
may have derived originally from the Afro-Latin Americas—perhaps
Mexico/New Spain, whether reaching Cuba directly thence, or via Spain
itself. Linares (1999, 26–32) points out the similarity between the chordal
ostinatos of the punto ritornello and those of the eighteenth-century penin-
sular salon fandango, whose ultimate origins in Afro-Latin music seem likely.
One might further note the parallels between the punto libre and the
flamenco-style fandango libre, with its strophes in free meter punctuated by
instrumental ostinatos often in ternary meter.
For its part, the 6/8–3/4 sesquiáltera/hemiola figure, which is particularly
abundant in Latin American genres like the punto, surfaces in various pen-
insular sources dating as far back as the mid-sixteenth century. During that
period it came to constitute a cliché in Spanish song, recurring in many
romances, villancicos, and Spanish-Italian frottolas (Binkley and Frenk 1995,
14). Melodies with rhythms nearly identical to that of the punto fijo pre-
sented in example 3 can also be found in this era.4 The sesquiáltera figure
also constituted a basic feature of the zarabanda (sarabande), which appears
to have emerged in the late 1500s in Mexico, possibly of Afro-Latin origin.
Scholars seem to disagree as to whether the sesquiáltera first emerged in
Spain or in the Americas.5 Whatever its origin, the pattern went on to
exhibit great popularity and fecundity in Latin America, while becoming
less prominent a feature of peninsular music after the seventeenth century.
In the latter 1700s a tune known as “punto de La Habana” or “punto
habanero” (Havana-style punto) came to be popular in Spain, documenting
that a punto cubano style had already coalesced and had even returned to the
metropole. Spanish composer Xavier Montsalvage (Galán 1983, 29) presented
the melody, although of uncertain historicity, as shown in example 4:6

Example 4. “Punto de La Habana”

01Manuel 142 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 The Guajira between Cuba and Spain : 143

While the vogue of the Cuban contradanza habanera in mid-nineteenth-

century Spain is well documented, as Galán observes, the documentation
of the “punto habanero” in Spain predates that form of musical vuelta (or
return) by a century, constituting the first known presence of Cuban music
in the peninsula. Let us turn to the course and dynamics of this return.

The Vuelta, Part I: The Guajira in Spain

From the 1850s, stylized, elaborated forms of gypsy and Andalusian

traditional song forms began to be widely performed in commercial con-
texts—especially the cafés cantantes—in Andalusian towns, primarily by gypsy
professional musicians. This diverse category of songs, loosely united by
performance styles and contexts, soon came to be called cante flamenco or
simply flamenco. As flamenco spread and evolved in these contexts, the
need for new material led singers to incorporate a wide variety of non-
gypsy genres into the repertoire. Among these was the guajira, which, to-
gether with the flamenco-style tango, milonga, petenera, and others, constituted
the aforementioned category of cantes de ida y vuelta—cantes of departure
and return, that is, between Spain and Latin America.
While some 1860 references to Andalusian versions of guajira remain
enigmatic,7 it is clear that by the 1880s the guajira had become an impor-
tant, popular, and well-defined flamenco cante, or song-type. From the cyl-
inder recordings of the 1890s through subsequent decades, it came to be
fairly well documented as a cante whose features persist through the present.
From the 1930s, Pepe Marchena, Juanito Valderrama, and other singers of
cante bonito (“pretty flamenco”) popularized a sort of rococo version of the
guajira, abounding in florid, delicate melismas crooned in a somewhat ef-
feminate, rubato style. By the 1970s this style had definitively passed out of
vogue and is currently regarded by most flamenco audiences as manneris-
tic and insipid; the guajira itself is also seldom performed since that period.
The emergence of the flamenco guajira coincided with a period of in-
tensified contact between Andalusia and Cuba, not only through the gen-
eral increase in maritime traffic and trade, but especially in the form of the
hundreds of thousands of peninsular soldiers who returned from duty in
the insurrectionary island. After the independence of Cuba from Spain in
1898, personal, economic, and cultural exchanges between the two coun-
tries persisted, with the port of Cádiz retaining some of its historical status
as a sort of sister city to Havana.
It is commonplace in flamenco discourse and literature to regard the
guajira as derivative of the Cuban punto. Although, as we note below, its
evolution may be somewhat more complex, the parallel and presumably
derivative features of the guajira are evident, as summarized here:

01Manuel 143 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 144 : Peter Manuel

Example 5: Guajira, by Manuel Escacena

—the use of the décima. Although many flamenco guajiras, especially in the
early period, include cuartetas (in abab form) and simple décimas not in espinela
form, the standard décima does come to be the most predominant verse form
in the guajira. Its use parallels a partial and ephemeral revival of the décima as
a literary genre in Spain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries8;
—pervasiveness of the sesquiáltera, primarily as an accompanimental ostinato
but also, in some early recorded guajiras, as a melodic figure, as shown in
examples 7 and 9 below;
—a chordal ostinato consisting of alternating bars of dominant and tonic, in
the major (see examples 6, 7, and 8 below);
—frequent use of an essentially major-scale melodic ambitus, roughly outlin-
ing a descent from the fifth degree (sol) to that an octave lower, and typically
concluding on a descending phrase (see example 5);
—lyrics which frequently depict Cuba and campesino life (albeit generally in
an idealized form).

01Manuel 144 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 The Guajira between Cuba and Spain : 145

Such similarities notwithstanding, the flamenco guajira, far from being a

simple imitation of its Cuban counterpart, exhibits from its earliest docu-
mented forms several distinctive features, especially the following:
—The melodies of the guajira do not correspond to any known punto tunes.
—The chordal ostinato is a simple dominant-tonic pattern (sol-do, V7-I), with-
out any sense of Mixolydian modality or dual tonicity; also distinctive is the
pattern often used in ritornellos: V7 / I / V7 / I / IV / I/ V7 / I.
—The guajira is “flamenco-ized” or aflamencada by means of florid vocal
melismas and a rich, elaborated guitar style; hence, as the latter developed
its own characteristic norms, guajiras also became a solo guitar sub-style.

Both the similarities to and differences from the Cuban punto can be seen
in example 5, schematizing one décima of a 1909 recording, and represent-
ing the most common stock melody of what Molina and Espín (1991, 48–
49) call the “central guajira.” Note here the general ambitus of sol-to-sol (G
to G an octave lower), the descending final syllable, and the prevailingly
syllabic vocal style. Both vocal style and guitar accompaniment are ren-
dered in a highly rubato and irregular manner, as only imperfectly indi-
cated in the transcription (especially bar 20, which I have idiosyncratically
notated as 11/8).9
Example 6 shows the standard guitar ostinato for the flamenco guajira.

Example 6. Guajira guitar ostinato

Example 7, from a 1914 sheet-music song entitled “Azúcar Cande—

Guajiras Gitanas” (Sugar Candy—Gypsy Guajiras), shows the commence-
ment of another popular early flamenco guajira melody, with its clear
hemiola pattern of six eighth-notes followed by a bar in 3/4.
The differences between the flamenco guajira and the Cuban punto can
be seen to correspond to their somewhat distinct origins. On the one hand,
there should be little doubt that the guajira’s vogue in Spain around the
turn of the century owed much to the intensified travels of Spaniards to
and from Cuba, including the tours and residences of flamenco singers
such as El Mochuelo (Antonio Pozo, 1868–1937) and Pepe de la Matrona
(1887–1980) in Cuba. However, by that time the flamenco guajira had al-
ready acquired a distinctive form; hence, for example, even the guajira
recorded in 1906 by El Mochuelo in Cuba is in the distinctively Spanish
guajira style rather than in Cuban punto form.10 These distinctive features
of the flamenco guajira, rather than deriving from the contemporary

01Manuel 145 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 146 : Peter Manuel

Example 7. “Guajiras Gitanas”

Cuban punto, can be found in and presumably derive from earlier pen-
insular music. One likely source, cited by Spanish musicologists (e.g.,
Molina and Espín 1991, 42–43), would comprise certain songs associated
with light tonadilla theater. While as mentioned above, the hemiola figure
became less common in Iberian music after the era of the zarabanda, it
does appear in a few vernacular theater songs, notably the “paño moruno”
melody and rhythmically similar zarandillo songs from tonadillas, such
as the “Tirana del Zarandillo,” excerpted as example 8 (from Pedrell
1958, 102–07):11

Example 8. “Tirana del Zarandillo”

01Manuel 146 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 The Guajira between Cuba and Spain : 147

While musicologists regard such songs as peninsular precursors to the

flamenco guajira, it is important to remember that, as mentioned above,
the punto itself, in some form, had already established a presence in Spain
from the 1700s. Alongside the aforementioned “punto de La Habana” of
this period, inexpensive chapbooks (pliegos de cordel ) sold in Andalusia in
the early 1800s contained “Décimas nuevas para cantar los aficionados
por el punto de La Habana” (New décimas for amateurs to sing to the [tune
of] the punto of Havana)(Blas Vega 1982, 77). As such, some of the flamenco
guajira’s distinctive features may well derive from archaic elements of the
punto, which had long been domesticated in Andalusia.12 At the same time,
it is also quite possible that the hemiola rhythm was seen as deriving more
immediately from and evocative of the Americas, particularly Cuba. In
that sense it may have functioned to some extent as a sort of iconic Latin
Americanism (much, perhaps, like its role as a cliché of Latinoness in West
Side Story’s “I like to live in Ame-ri-ca”).13
Whether as a caricature of Cuban music or an elaboration of well-estab-
lished peninsular genres, the flamenco guajira developed as a thoroughly
Iberian entity. Accordingly, as noted above, the tunes it employs, from its
earliest recordings, bear no particular resemblance to known Cuban punto
melodies. Indeed, the process of indigenizing Caribbean musics—with its
attendant elements of musical elaboration and refinement—was commented
on as early as 1831, when Estébanez Calderón wrote, “It’s pointless to say
that new songs and dances, however originally delightful and lascivious,
arrive at Cádiz from the Indies; [for] they never take root unless, in passing
through Seville, they leave as a foul sediment what is too clumsy”
([1831]1984, 15).14
Molina and Espín (1991, chap. 2) stress that the “imported” guajira, as
part of the flamenco repertoire, is in fact older than more quintessentially
flamenco cantes like soleares and bulerías. Similarly, it is worth pointing out
that while the Cuban punto may date in some form from the eighteenth
century, the Spanish guajira’s appearance as an urban commercial song-
form predates by several decades the emergence of any urban Cuban popu-
lar song-form by that name.15
The lyric content of the Spanish guajira also illustrates the senses in
which it is at once imported and indigenized. The absence of references to
Cuba in many songs reflects the extent to which the guajira, like the “Punto
cubano ” in Manuel de Falla’s Piezas españolas, could be regarded as simply a
local idiom whose foreign origins were irrelevant. Somewhat in the man-
ner of a free-floating signifier, the guajira could even be identified not with
Cubans, but, as we have seen, with its local performers, the gypsies, as in
the aforementioned “Guajiras gitanas” (“Gypsy guajiras”). For their part,
peninsular guajira texts illustrate some of the ambivalences of Spaniards
toward the island. Some texts sympathetically portray the Spanish colonial

01Manuel 147 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 148 : Peter Manuel

soldier fighting the Cuban insurgents,16 or pining to be back in Spain. Yet

although Cuba, for many soldiers, was a site of jungle, disease, and death,
the guajira most typically portrayed Cuba as a land of sexy mulatto women
and bucolic rural life, especially in accordance with the nostalgia with which
many Spaniards regarded Cuba after 1898. Although having little in com-
mon with the more realistic Cuban punto itself, to a considerable extent
these images parallel idealized portrayals by urban white Cubans of their
own country, as we shall note below.
The décima of example 5 is typical in this sense, and also in its departure
from the espinela form; this was one of the two most popular and recurrent
décimas sung in Spanish guajiras:
A mí me gusta por la mañana I like in the mornings,
después del café bebido after my cup of coffee,
pasear me por la sabana to stroll through the savannah,
[alt: Havana]
con mi tabaco encendido. smoking my cigar,
Luego me siento en mi silla and then I recline in my chair,
y en my silla o silletón and in my big chair
y saco en papelón I buy one of those big pieces of paper
de esos que llaman diarios they call the daily newspaper
y parezco un millonario so that I look like one of those
millionaires
de esos de la población. about town.

In similar vein is the other most popular décima:

Contigo me caso indiana I marry you, woman of the Indies,
si se muere tu papá and if your father dies,
díseselo (sic) a tu mamá tell your mother,
hermosísima cubana. most beautiful Cuban,
Tengo una casa en La Habana I’ve got a house in Havana,
destinada para tí destined for you,
y con un techo de marfí’ with an ivory roof
y el piso de plata forma and a silver floor,
para tí bella paloma for you, pretty dove,
tengo yo la flor de lí’ and a fleur-de-lis.17

Both these décimas were recorded many times, becoming familiar stock
texts in a manner atypical of the more varied Cuban décimas. The reitera-
tion of these same few décimas reflected the absence of a strong tradition
of vernacular or literary décima composition in contemporary Spain,
unlike Cuba. The idealization of Cuban rural life becomes even more
eccentric in guajiras such as that rendered, with the most florid and refined
melismas, by La Niña de la Puebla around 1932, in which she sings
of being a (male) plantation owner with a hundred black workers and a
Mexican (!) slave.18

01Manuel 148 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 The Guajira between Cuba and Spain : 149

A parallel and closely related form of Spanish guajira flourished in the

turn-of-the-century decades in Spanish music theater (zarzuela and sainete,
which replaced the humbler tonadilla). As mentioned, the early flamenco
guajira appears to have had roots in tonadilla songs, and stylistic affinities
between the theatrical and flamenco namesakes subsequently persisted.
Both shared as their most distinctive feature the sesquiáltera ostinato. In
theater guajiras, as in early flamenco counterparts, the hemiola persists both
in accompaniment patterns, and also in melodies, in the figure seen in
example 7 above (six eighth-notes followed by a 3/4 pattern), and in the
following excerpt, shown as example 9, of the well-known guajira from
Ruberto Chapí’s zarzuela “La Revoltosa” (1897).

Example 9. Guajira from “La Revoltosa”

Like flamenco counterparts, but in accordance with the argument of the

particular zarzuela, some Spanish theater guajiras were used to portray Cuba
(such as Valverde’s “La Mulata”), while others functioned simply as ab-
stract song-types. The guajira of “La Revoltosa” would fall in the latter
category, with its text neither in décima form nor related to Cuba, its initial
bVI-V harmonies more reminiscent of Andalusia than the Americas, and
its prevailing character of a light art-song. Other theater guajiras, however,
bear close similarities to the flamenco guajira. In general, it may be said
that the Spanish theater guajira resembles its flamenco counterpart more
than it does the Cuban punto. However, around the turn of the century, a
Cuban theatrical form of guajira emerged with striking similarities to its
peninsular namesake.

The Urban Cuban Guajira

In Havana in 1899, theater-music composer Jorge Anckermann (1877–

1941), challenged to produce suitable music for a drama set in the Cuban
countryside, composed a song that inaugurated a new form of “guajira.”

01Manuel 149 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 150 : Peter Manuel

The song, “El arroyo que murmura” (The stream that murmurs), not only
became a familiar evergreen in the Cuban popular song repertoire, but
further served as the model for many (mostly less-inspired) guajiras to fol-
low, by other composers of Cuban zarzuela and teatro bufo music. These
included Moisés Simons, Gonzalo Roig, Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes,
Ernesto Lecuona, and Anckermann himself.
Like the Spanish guajira, the Cuban salon and theater guajira presented
a naively exoticized and romanticized image of the Cuban countryside.
Décimas composed and sung by actual campesinos abounded in realistic por-
trayals of poverty, landlessness, exploitation by Yankee landlords, and other
decidedly non-idyllic aspects of rural life (see Ibarra 1985, chap. 5). How-
ever, the urban guajira largely avoided such topics, or if portraying pov-
erty, depicted it as somehow quaint. Hence the popularization of familiar
“June/moon” rhyme clichés, like “monte/sinsonte” (mountain/mocking-
bird), “bohío/río” (hut/river), and “montaña/caña” (mountain/cane).
The Cuban theater guajira, in its stylization of aspects of rural music,
can be seen as the product of a natural desire of urban composers to ex-
ploit and develop aspects of rural music, inspired both by nationalist and
strictly musical considerations. As Argeliers León (1972, 98–100) has ob-
served, it may also have been informed by the increased migration of white
campesinos to the coastal cities in the latter 1800s. However, as León, Robin
Moore (1997, 131–32), and others have insightfully discussed, such songs
also had a less innocent dimension. At a time when an Afrocubanist artis-
tic movement and lower-class Afro-Cuban music (especially the son) were
coming to permeate urban culture, the social phenomenon of urban
guajirismo could constitute for many Cubans an alternative form of na-
tional and cultural identity. As the nature of “Cubanness” was being con-
tested and formed, even many urban blacks and mulattos found in
guarijismo—including the stage guajira—a form of identity remote from the
obstreperous rumba and santería music, which seemed to some like em-
barrassing relics of the slavery era.
In creating his guajira, Anckermann, like his successors, preserved certain
iconic features of the punto and zapateo, including the sesquiáltera ostinato, the
use of décima form, the syllabic vocal style, and the invocations, however
idealized, of the Cuban countryside. The most prominent departure from the
punto, aside from the use of larger ensembles, was the use of a bipartite form
in which an initial section in minor segues to one in the direct major key
(often leading to a conclusion resembling a zapateo19). Example 10, showing
the first bars of “El arroyo que murmura,” illustrates some of these features.
Cuban musicologists are clearly correct in describing Anckermann’s
creation as a free stylization of elements of the punto and zapateo. Particu-
larly obvious is the similarity between Anckermann’s guajira and Sancti
Spiritus’s punto fijo styles such as example 3. Galán (1983, 49) also percep-
tively notes the sense in which the nineteenth-century Cuban contradanza

01Manuel 150 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 The Guajira between Cuba and Spain : 151

Example 10. “El arroyo que murmura,” by Jorge Anckermann

habanera, with its binary form, constituted another sort of model for the
theater guajira and other contemporary stage songs. At the same time, it is
quite likely that Anckermann may have been influenced by the Spanish
theatrical guajira. Both (together with the punto spirituano) shared a rigidly
formulaic melodic rhythm (six eighth-notes in 6/8 followed by a contrast-
ing bar in 3/4). Also striking is the way in which Chapí’s aforementioned
guajira of 1897, like Anckermann’s model of two years later, commences in
minor and modulates to the direct major.
It is highly probable that Anckermann was familiar with the peninsular
guajira. Zarzuela troupes constantly went back and forth between Cuba and
Andalusia during this era, which also saw an intensified migration of Span-
iards to Cuba (see León 1972, 99). Cuban nationalism notwithstanding,
Spanish music remained popular in Cuba throughout this period, and as
we have mentioned, many peninsular musicians visited or even resided in
the island, including El Mochuelo, who recorded a flamenco-style guajira
there in 1906. While we have mentioned the presence of such Spanish
musicians as a possible conduit for transplanting Cuban music to the
metropole, they would certainly have exerted an influence in the other
direction, especially since they were performers of flamenco—including the
flamenco guajira—, not Cuban music. In general, the relation between the
Spanish and Cuban theater guajiras merits further investigation.
The Cuban theater guajira, aside from its formal similarities to its Span-
ish namesake, followed a somewhat similar trajectory. The guajira in
Lecuona’s zarzuela “El Cafetal” (1929), with its orchestral accompaniment
and light-operatic vocal rendering, can be seen as a sort of Cuban counter-
part to Chapí ’s guajira in “La Revoltosa.”20 Also like the peninsular zarzuela
guajira, the Anckermann-style guajira declined dramatically in the 1940s,
to some extent along with light Cuban music-theater in general.21

01Manuel 151 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 152 : Peter Manuel

That decline, however, by no means constituted the end of the

“guajira” in Cuba. In the 1930s an entirely new guajira emerged, as
popularized by performers like Guillermo Portabales, the Trío
Matamoros, and Ñico Saquito. The new guajira de salón resembled its
predecessor in being an urban creation with no particular rural appeal,
in its very occasional use of décima form, and in its lyrics presenting an
idyllic, bucolic image of guajiro life. Although it could conceivably be
performed by a horn-based ensemble,22 more typically its accompani-
ment suggested a rural, Hispanic-derived flavor by foregrounding acous-
tic guitars, with light percussion. In other respects, however, the new
guajira was quite distinct from its predecessor, being essentially a substyle
of the Cuban son, in quadratic meter, with the characteristic syncopated
rhythm of that genre.
The most typical and unpretentious guajira would reiterate a simple do-
sol-fa (e.g., C-F-G) chordal ostinato (although it might end on the fa or G,
in a way that should make us hesitate to call that chord the “dominant”). In
this pattern is by far the most famous guajira of all, the song “Guajira
Guantanamera” (Peasant woman of Guantánamo), composed around 1940
by Joseito Fernández. In his daily radio programs, Fernández would sing
new verses (in décima form) to the stock tune of “Guantanamera,” using the
catchy title chorus as a punctuating refrain. The song was internationally
popularized with verses by José Martí. Other guajiras might have more
varied chordal progressions, again reflecting their origins among urban
professional composers. Traditional features, such as the use of décima and
final cadences on the “dominant,” became exceptions rather than the norm.
In general, the new guajira bore so scanty a resemblance to that of
Anckermann that it can only be regarded as a successor, rather than a
descendant, of that genre. Since the mid-century decades, the 6/8
Anckermann-style guajira has been largely forgotten in Cuba, and in popular
Cuban musical discourse the term “guajira” invariably denotes the subse-
quent style, which, as musicologists note, should more properly be called
“guajira-son.” In general, the rise of the guajira-son reflects the predomi-
nance of the son in Cuban popular music and, as I shall suggest further, a
broader process in which ternary-metered folk-derived forms give way to
quadratic-metered popular and Afro-Caribbean-derived ones. This
binarization process is particularly evident in the way that the eighteenth-
century punto melody shown in example 4 above resurfaces—in 4/4—in nueva
trova singer Pablo Milanés’s song “Canción,” whose opening line is pre-
sented here as example 11.23

Example 11. “Canción,” by Pablo Milanés

01Manuel 152 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 The Guajira between Cuba and Spain : 153

The Vuelta, Part II; Postlude to the Flamenco Guajira

As we have mentioned, the popularity of the flamenco guajira subsided
in the mid-century decades, and the zarzuela counterpart declined even
earlier. In the latter part of its heyday, however, the flamenco guajira con-
tributed at least indirectly to the emergence of a new cante bonito flamenco
cante, called “colombiana” (or “colombianas”24). The most distinctive fea-
ture of the colombiana is the guitar ostinato, in 4/4, with a strong 3-3-2 syn-
copation, alternating bars of dominant and tonic (typically, in E7-A
fingerings). In flamenco discourse, it is common to read or hear that this
genre, as its name suggests, is a stylization of music from Colombia. In fact,
as has been well documented, the colombiana was invented by cante-bonito
singer Pepe Marchena in 1931 (with the guitar accompaniment conven-
tions created by Ramón Montoya). Why Marchena chose that name, and
what his sources of melodic inspiration were, remain unclear (see, e.g.,
Molina and Espín 1991, chap. 6), but there is no evidence linking the cante
in any way to Colombia. Nevertheless, the customary categorization of
colombianas as a cante de ida y vuelta is not entirely without justification, for
the syncopated guitar rhythm and tonic-dominant ostinati do suggest links
to the Americas, although to Cuba rather than Colombia. Hence, colombianas
are often paired with the guajira, and are sometimes spoken of as having
the aire or feel of the guajira, although in duple rather than ternary meter.
While it would be inaccurate to regard the colombiana as a simple deriva-
tive of the guajira, there is a certain sort of parental as well as filial relation-
ship between the two.
In the subsequent few decades, the colombiana enjoyed considerable
popularity, which, like the appeal of Marchena’s music in general, was
based on the general public rather than serious flamenco listeners, who
have generally scorned cante bonito. By the 1970s, the colombiana, together
with the guajira, was definitively out of favor. However, it is during this
decade that a somewhat similar genre, or set of genres, called “rumba,”
came to attain even greater mass appeal than the colombiana. The term
“rumba” has historically been used with great flexibility. Originally denot-
ing a traditional Afro-Cuban voice-and-percussion dance-music genre, in
early-twentieth-century Cuban comic theater (teatro bufo) the rumba de-
noted a stylized stage song often more similar to the contemporary son. In
the United States in the 1930s and 1940s, diluted versions of the son were
marketed under the name “rumba” (or rhumba), while in Spain, the term
came to designate light, duple-metered flamenco-style songs, also more
akin to son than to traditional rumba. In 1974, innovative flamenco guitarist
Paco de Lucía enjoyed a smash hit with a bouncy instrumental jam in 4/4
entitled “Entre dos Aguas,” also labeled a “rumba.” In the same period, a
Catalan-based pop-song style called “rumba,” with a somewhat similar
rhythm, came to enjoy national appeal.25 The next decades, including the

01Manuel 153 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 154 : Peter Manuel

present, have seen a tremendous vogue of pop “nuevo flamenco,” whose

core genre is “rumba,” a term which now designates any light, pop
flamenco song in 4/4, with accented upbeats (2 and 4).
The pop flamenco rumba neither evokes Cuba nor bears any particular
stylistic relation with Cuban music, and should only in the most indirect
sense be categorized as an ida y vuelta genre. However, although Spanish
“flamencologists” do not describe it as a derivative of the colombiana, the
rumba can certainly be seen as a successor, occupying the same status as a
light, pop flamenco substyle in 4/4, which enjoys mass appeal. Insofar as
one can in this sense posit a certain line of continuity from guajira, through
colombiana to rumba, the transition from ternary to binary meter is perhaps
the most conspicuous change. The parallels with Cuba are equally mani-
fest: In both cases one can outline a line of development—with various
external influences—from Cuban música guajira eventually leading to a more
Afro-Cuban-flavored mainstream pop song-form in quadratic meter.

Some Concluding Perspectives

An essay on the guajira complex which aspired to true elegance might

endeavor to conclude with a single over-arching theme. Perhaps, however,
such an unwieldy musical family as the guajira, spanning disparate centu-
ries, continents, and social strata, may not lend itself to any such coherent
analysis. Given such considerations, in lieu of a proper conclusion, I present
here a set of considerations which, although emerging from the data, may
have broader implications for the study of Spanish and Cuban music, His-
panic-American cultural exchanges, and the general dynamics of musical
travel, transformation, and rearticulation.
One theme that emerges from the study of the guajira complex is the
sheer difficulty of reconstructing—and hence, drawing conclusions from—
the evolution of vernacular musical forms prior to the twentieth century.
The process is further confounded by the often arbitrary and misleading
way that names and terms come to be used—for instance, the early fla-
menco “rumba” which is in fact an adaptation of the son; the colombiana
which has nothing to do with Colombia; and entities like a recent Spanish
pop salsa-style song, confusingly labeled “punto cubano” (presumably be-
cause it contains quatrains by José Martí).26
The complex dynamics of musical flows and exchanges constitute at
once a further impediment to easy analysis and a significant developmen-
tal feature in themselves. The guajira complex contains a particularly intri-
cate and contradictory set of persistent marginal survivals, on the one hand,
and ephemeral and spontaneous changes and fads, on the other. Thus, the
peninsular-derived Mixolydian modality eclipsed centuries ago in Spain,
but survives in the Cuban punto and even in the modern guajira-son. Con-

01Manuel 154 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 The Guajira between Cuba and Spain : 155

versely, the flamenco guajira may contain features derived from Cuban-
derived melodic models, such as the eighteenth-century “Punto de La
Habana,” which are no longer found in Cuba. Similarly, the hemiola phras-
ing basic to Anckermann’s urban guajira, although perhaps ultimately of
Latin American (Mexican?) origin, may have derived more directly from
the Spanish zarzuela and flamenco guajira. Such continuities notwithstand-
ing, one must also note the senses in which certain developments, includ-
ing entire genres, derive not from collective, folk-style gestations, but from
the innovations of particular individuals, such as Anckermann and Pepe
Marchena.
As the guajira family shows, the musical exchanges between Cuba and
Spain seem to constitute neither a regular and constant circular flow, nor an
easily discernible sequence of one-way transmissions. Rather, the historical
record seems to suggest an irregular and often overlapping series of ebbs and
flows, whether circular or unidirectional, with eddies and backwaters, involv-
ing particular movements at particular times. These would include, for
example, the early migrations of Canary Islanders to Cuba in the 1690s27;
the subsequent migratory flow from the Canaries (especially La Palma) in the
nineteenth century, and its reversal in the mid-1900s; the presence of Span-
ish soldiers in Cuba during its wars of independence; and—of particular
importance—the travels of Spanish zarzuela and tonadilla troupes back and
forth between Cuba and Spain in the latter nineteenth century.
A related, and striking aspect of the interactions between Cuba and
Spain is the particular combination of, on the one hand, resilient and dis-
tinctive local traditions and developments, and on the other, transconti-
nental exchanges. In both Spain and Cuba, local traditions had particular
sorts of tenacity and importance. As Romualdo Molina told me, “Even in
my youth, in one barrio of Seville, people had a particular accent, a way of
telling jokes, of dancing, and of singing fandango, while in another barrio,
five hundred meters away, everything would be different” (personal inter-
view). Distinctions between musical traditions of different towns and re-
gions were (and in many respects remain) even more marked, especially
since until the late 1800s Spanish roads were primitive and infested with
robbers. Inland travel in contemporary Cuba was no better; at a time when
as many as two thousand ships might visit Havana yearly, overland con-
veyances between there and not-so-distant Cienfuegos occurred only once
weekly (Thomas 1971, 136, 149). Musical traditions—such as local varieties
of punto—were correspondingly diverse. Thus, while sea travel was not with-
out its vicissitudes, in many respects the Andalusian ports of Seville and
Cádiz were closer linked to Havana than to Madrid, while Havana itself
was in some ways nearer to those peninsular sister cities than to inland
Cuban towns like Camagüey.28
Such conditions fostered idiosyncratic forms of transnational and local inter-
actions. In many respects, the guajira complex evolved as a transcontinental

01Manuel 155 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 156 : Peter Manuel

entity, easily straddling the Atlantic charca or pond, which was traversed by
zarzuela troupes, immigrants, soldiers, touring musicians, and eventually, pho-
nograph records. In other respects, the complex developed particular local
features. Hence, for example, the extent to which one could speak of a distinc-
tive Córdoba style of singing flamenco guajira (Molina and Espín 1992, 53), and
the way that the tradition of improvising spoken décimas, after a long hiatus in
the peninsula, seems to have curiously taken root, under Cuban influence,
in the Alpujarra hills of Spain (Checa 1994, 309).
The circulation involved not only the transmission of stylistic and struc-
tural features but also their affective resignification. Most obvious in this
category was the way that the guajira in Spain could either function simply
as an abstract musical genre, or as one somehow redolent of gypsies (hence,
the “guajiras gitanas”), or, most often, as a style evocative of an idyllic and
sensual Cuba (like the choral habaneras still sung in various parts of Spain).
In a series of exoticizations, Spain served as the “Orient” of Europe,
Andalusia as the Orient of greater Spain, and Cuba as the Orient of
Andalusia. Even in Cuba itself, the urban guajira—whether of Anckermann
or Portabales—functioned similarly, exoticizing and romanticizing campesino
life for the entertainment of urban audiences.
Among the many formal developments and transformations involved in
the trajectories of the guajira complex, one broad trend, mentioned above in
passing, merits further comment. Both in Spain and Cuba, guajira-related
musics can be seen to exhibit a binarization process by which ternary-me-
tered traditional folk forms transform into duple-metered ones when they
develop into mainstream commercial popular music genres. Thus, the 3/4-6/8
flamenco guajira, after enjoying several decades of vitality, gives way to the
4/4 colombiana and the pop rumba, and Anckermann’s similarly ternary guajira
is eclipsed by the quadratic guajira-son. Such processes extend to Spanish and
Cuban popular musics as a whole. Despite the legendary Spanish fondness
for triple meter, and the popularity of the 12/8 cantes like bulerías and soleares
in flamenco proper, the dominant popular music genres in Spain are over-
whelmingly duple-metered, whether the pop flamenco rumba and tango, the
pop ballad, or rock en español. Similarly, Cuban traditional genres in ternary
meter, from the zapateo to the punto, have either remained marginal or died
out altogether, drowned out in the popular music sphere by duple-metered
son, salsa, rumba, mambo, danzón, and rap. The same process, indeed, can be
seen in the Americas as a whole, wherein triple-metered or 6/8 traditional
forms, such as the vals, cueca, huapango, and bambuco, while perhaps surviving
in folkloric capacities, give way to duple-metered mainstream commercial
genres like samba, tango, porro, cumbia, ranchera, and rock. Cuban musicolo-
gist Pérez Fernández (1986) made an ambitious, if problematic, attempt
to survey aspects of this process, which clearly involves a certain sort of
Afro-Latin influence. However, this rather fundamental and vast musical de-
velopment warrants further attention.

01Manuel 156 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 The Guajira between Cuba and Spain : 157

The trajectory of the guajira complex can, in a related sense, be seen to

reflect a certain triumph of Afro-Latin musical forms over what must be
regarded as a musically weak Cuban campesino tradition. Alejo Carpentier
incisively commented on the rather limited musical raw materials that guajiro
music offered to the serious composer, writing, “Those who claimed to
utilize guajiro music in larger-scale works were surprised that after a first
score nothing else was left to be done” ([1946] 2001, 266). Nevertheless, of
course, the punto did inspire, however indirectly, a flamenco cante that
flourished for some seven decades, and at least one form of Cuban urban
music. Yet ultimately these genres proved ephemeral or marginal, swept
aside by the tide of sensuous Afro-Latin rhythms dominating the commer-
cial music scene. Ironically, while various forms of urban guajira flowered
and then declined, in his marginal but stable cultural niche, the Cuban
guajiro has gone on singing the punto, whether in state-run competitions, on
the radio, in Miami clubs, or under the proverbial palm tree.

Notes

1. A clarification may be useful: While punto is the main genre in the

category of música guajira or guajiro music (a category which would
also include, for example, the zapateo), the term “guajira,” as the name
of a musical genre, does not denote punto. Rather, “guajira” (aside from
meaning “Cuban peasant woman”) would, depending on context, des-
ignate one of three distinct genres: the flamenco guajira, the Cuban
early-twentieth-century theater guajira, or the subsequent urban Cu-
ban guajira-son.
2. A similar tonal ambiguity obtains in the minority of puntos—called punto
carvajal or punto español—that oscillate between major and minor chords,
as in the configuration Am-E major.
3. León 1979, 23. The singing, by two voices, in parallel thirds is a typical
feature of this punto spirituano style.
4. See, e.g., the song presented by Francisco Salinas in his De Música Libri
Septem (1577), extracted in Pérez Fernández 1986, 70.
5. E.g., García Matos and Hipólito Rossy (in Molina and Espín 1991, 25,
47) claim a peninsular origin for the hemiola, while Molina and Espín
themselves seem to suggest the opposite (1991, 47).
6. The authenticity of this melody is dismissed by García Matos (1972,
38), but it remains of interest, especially in relation to ex. 11.
7. See Molina and Espín 1991, 45.
8. Pasmanick (1997, 254), citing Vicente Mendoza, mentions the poetry
of the romantics Gaspar Núñez de Arce (1834–1903), José Zorrilla y
Moral (1817–1893), and the later “generation of 1927,” including Jorge
Guillén (1893–1984) and Federico García Lorca (1898–1936).

01Manuel 157 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 158 : Peter Manuel

9. “A mí me gusta por la mañana,” from Manuel Escacena, Un maestro del

cante (Sonifolk 20103). The guitar fingering is that of E7-A, using a capo
on the third fret. During this period, A7-D patterns were also used.
10. See, e.g., III:6 (the familiar “Al amanecer el día”) on Los cantes
hispanoamericanos en el mundo del flamenco: Ida y vuelta (Pasarela CDP8/
858).
11. From the tonadilla “Los novios y la maja,” by Pablo Esteva y Grimen.
A very similar zarandillo is excerpted and discussed in Grenet 1939,
xvi. For further discussion of the paño moruno melody, see Galán (1983,
39–41).
12. Cf. Marchena’s remark: “The guajira, which is a cante brought from Cuba
and flamenco-ized, has declined there and here has taken root in such a
way that it’s become our own.” Interview with Marchena, in ABC (news-
paper, Andalucía), 12/12/72, reprinted in booklet accompanying Los
cantes hispanoamericanos en el mundo del flamenco: Ida y vuelta (Pasarela
CDP8/858). All translations from the Spanish are by the author.
13. The hemiola figure is also basic to both Mexican son huasteco “La
Petenera” and early flamenco versions of the cante “Peteneras,” which
are also remarkably similar in their chords and melodies. The origin of
this song/cante remains unclear. See Molina and Espín 1991, chap. 4.
14. A less charitable view is offered by Rafael Marín in his flamenco gui-
tar manual of 1902, in which he writes of the guajira, “This cante is
Cuban, except that it is adorned differently here, but often in such
poor taste that Cubans would scarcely recognize it” ([1902] 1995, 70).
15. Such considerations have generated some misleading accounts of the
guajira’s origin. For example, composer Joaquín Turina wrote in 1928,
“The indigenous [Cuban] whites, that is, the campesinos, sang and still
sing a series of songs they call ‘punto cubano,’ which is nothing but
our own Andalusian guajira . . . Ernesto Lecuona has verified that the
so-called punto cubano is of Spanish origin and derives from the
Andalusian guajira, brought to Cuba by the first colonizers” (Turina
1982, 32–33). Whatever original Andalusian source existed for the
Cuban punto would certainly not have been designated by the Cuban
term “guajira.”
16. In this vein is the décima “Al amanecer el día,” recorded several times
around the turn of the century.
17. The naivete of such verses was not lost on Spaniards, inspiring paro-
dies such as one recorded in 1933: “I married you, creole woman/but
not your mother; /tell her to go in exile to Spain/tell her she can visit
tomorrow/but not while I’m home/and if she comes while I’m still
here/I’ll throw her out the window/and if she’s lucky she’ll land on
her feet” (on Los cantes hispanoamericanos en el mundo del flamenco: Ida y
vuelta (Pasarela CDP8/858), III:4) (Yo contigo me casé indiana/pero
no con tu mamá/díle que se vaya/a la España desterra’/Díle que venga

01Manuel 158 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 The Guajira between Cuba and Spain : 159

mañana/pero cuando yo no esté/que si entra aquí una ve’/de casa no

sale ya/la tiro por la ventana/y a lo mejor cae de pie.)
18. On La Niña de la Puebla (DIENC CD 116, 6).
19. The zapateo was a popular rural instrumental dance-music form, with
standardized melodic figures in fast 6/8, typically played on tres or
other stringed instruments.
20. Also worthy of mention are the guajira-inspired pieces by composer
Amadeo Roldán, such as his “Guajira vueltabajera” of 1928 for cello
and piano, which exploits, in a sort of Debussy/Golliwog modernist
manner, some of the genre’s distinctive features. In another essay
(Manuel 2002), I discuss Roldán’s adaptation of Mixolydian tonality;
also noteworthy is how the cello and piano playfully toss back and
forth fragments in 6/8 and 3/4 tempi.
21. Galán (1983, 51) notes how the theater guajira can be seen as the pro-
genitor of the early twentieth-century clave and criolla song-forms, but
these enjoyed relatively ephemeral popularity.
22. See, e.g., Benny Moré’s big-band “Soy campesino” on Sonero Mayor
(EGREM LD-3974.
23. On Lilia Vera y Pablo Milanés (EGREM LD-3988). I have transposed
this excerpt from the original E major to C major to facilitate compari-
son with example 4.
24. Note the somewhat interchangeable use of plural and singular forms
of flamenco cante names; hence, one may sing “una colombiana,” or,
more often, “por colombianas,” lit., “in colombianas.”
25. For further discussion of the Spanish pop rumba see Manuel 1988, 121–26.
26. Vicente Soto, “Tengo flores para tí,” on Entre dos mundos (Fonomusic
CD-8127).
27. The Cuban city of Matanzas is said to have been founded by Canary
immigrants in 1693 (Thomas 1971, 97).
28. This combination of local insularity and transcontinental travel was
particularly marked in the Canaries. López Viera (2003, 39) describes
how until recent decades, many peasants in the island of Gomera never
traveled more than a few miles from their isolated native villages in the
hills, except, in many cases, to travel to Cuba for several years to work.

References

Binkley, Thomas, and Margit Frenk

1995 Spanish Romances of the Sixteenth Century. Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Blas Vega, José
1982 Booklet accompanying Magna antología del cante flamenco.
Hispavox S/C 66.201.

01Manuel 159 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 160 : Peter Manuel

Carpentier, Alejo
2001 Music in Cuba. Edited by Timothy Brennan, translated by
Alan West-Durán. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press. Translation of La música en Cuba. Mexico City: Fondo
de Cultura Económica, 1946.
Checa, Francisco
1994 “El Fandango: La Necesidad de una Interpretación Psicosocial.”
In V Congreso de Folclore Andaluz: Expresiones de la Cultura del
Pueblo: “El Fandango.” Málaga: Centro de Documentación
Musical de Andalucía, 293–312.
Díaz Ayala, Cristóbal
1981 La música cubana del Areyto a la Nueva Trova. San Juan: Edito-
rial Cubanacán.
Eli, Victoria, and Maria de los Ángeles Alfonso Rodríguez
1999 La música entre Cuba y España: Tradición e innovación. Barcelona:
Fundación Autor.
Estébanez Calderón, Serafín
[1831] 1984 “Un Baile en Triana.” In Dos escenas flamencas, edited by
Virgilio Márquez, 11–30. Córdoba: Ediciones Demofilo.
Galán, Natalio
1983 Cuba y sus sones. Valencia: Pre-Textos.
García Matos, Manuel
1972 “Aclaraciones sobre algunos de los Influjos que en el ‘Cante
Flamenco’ ha Ejercido la Canción Folklórica Hispano-Ameri-
cana.” In Actas de la Reunión Internacional de Estudios sobre las
Relaciones entre la Música Andaluza, la Hispanoamericana, y el
Flamenco, 33–41. Madrid: Centro de Estudios de Música
Andaluza y de Flamenco.
Grenet, Emilio
1939 Popular Cuban Music: 80 Revised and Corrected Compositions.
Havana: Carasa y Cía.
Ibarra, Jorge
1985 Un análisis psicosocial del cubano: 1898–1925. Havana: Edito-
rial de Ciencias Sociales.
León, Argeliers
1972 “Elementos de Origen Hispánico en la Música del Pueblo
Cubano.” In Actas de la Reunión Internacional de Estudios sobre
las Relaciones entre la Música Andaluza, la Hispanoamericana, y
el Flamenco, 11–27. Madrid: Centro de Estudios de Música
Andaluza y de Flamenco.
1984 Del canto y el tiempo. Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas.
Linares, María Teresa
1999 El punto cubano. Santiago de Cuba: Editorial Oriente.

01Manuel 160 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 The Guajira between Cuba and Spain : 161

Linares, María Teresa, and Faustino Núñez

1998 La música entre Cuba y España. Barcelona: Fundación Autor.
López Viera, José Ángel
2003 Tambor Gomero y Oralidad: Diálogo con los Herederos. Tenerife:
Colección Asphodel.
Manuel, Peter
1988 Popular Musics of the Non-Western World: An Introductory Survey.
New York: Oxford University Press.
2002 “From Scarlatti to ‘Guantanamera’: Dual Tonicity in Span-
ish and Latin American Musics.” Journal of the American Mu-
sicological Society 55, no. 2: 313–38.
Marín, Rafael
[1902] 1995 Método de guitarra por música y cifra: Aires andaluces.
Córdoba: Ediciones de la Posada.
Molina, Romualdo, and Miguel Espín
1991 Flamenco de ida y vuelta. Madrid: Grupo Cruzcampo.
Moore, Robin
1997 Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in
Havana, 1920–1940. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Pasmanick, Philip
1997 “Décima and Rumba: Iberian formalism in the heart of Afro-
Cuban song.” Latin American Music Review 18, no. 2: 252–77.
Pedrell, Felipe
1958 Cancionero musical popular español, Vol. 4. Barcelona: Casa
Editorial de Música Boileau.
Pérez Fernández, Rolando Antonio
1986 La binarización de los ritmos ternarios africanos en América Latina.
Havana: Casa de las Américas.
Siemens Hernández, Lothar
1994 “Antecedentes de la Forma Musical de la Décima y
Observaciones Históricas sobre su Empleo en Canarias.”
In La décima popular en la tradición hispánica: Actas del
Simposio Internacional sobre la Décima (Las Palmas, del 17 al
22 de diciembre de 1992), edited by Maximiano Trapero,
361–38. Las Palmas: Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran
Canario.
Thomas, Hugh
1971 Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom. New York: Harper & Row.
Trapero, Maximiano, ed.
1994 La décima popular en la tradición hispánica: Actas del Simposio
Internacional sobre la Décima (Las Palmas, del 17 al 22 de
Diciembre de 1992). Las Palmas: Universidad de Las Palmas
de Gran Canario.

01Manuel 161 12/8/04, 3:53 PM

 162 : Peter Manuel

2001 La décima: Su historia, su geografía, sus manifestaciones. Evora,

Portugal: Cámara Municipal de Evora.
Turina, Joaquín
1982 La música andaluza. Sevilla: Ediciones Alfar.

01Manuel 162 12/8/04, 3:53 PM