Breathe
By Mónica Hernández
The news wakes me up and moves me so much that I not only put on a playlist of boleros, of those of always, but I do it with the singers of yesteryear, the original ones. The music takes me and makes me feel the need to write this column, to pay tribute to those who gave this gift that today belongs to Humanity (with a capital letter), recognition granted by UNESCO.
The bolero is said to have been born in Spain, in the 18th century, with a beat of ¾ and it was a genre that was danced. Like everything Spanish, it arrived in the colonies and on the island of Cuba it was modified to 4/4 and percussion was added to accompany the guitar. It was also added the nostalgia, the loneliness, the loss, the illusion and all that accompanies the Caribbean music, product, like the blood of its inhabitants, of the mixture of races and cultures. Of the centrifugation of illusions and longings. It is recognized that the first bolero is Tristeza, by Pepe Sánchez, an island tailor and troubadour who composed it in 1883 (the word troubadour reminds us of the Middle Ages, hence the image of a solitary man strumming a stringed instrument, squeezing the sorrow, the murria).
