No sé. Lo ignoro. / Desconozco todo el tiempo que anduve
sin encontrarla nuevamente. / ¿Tal vez un siglo? Acaso.
Acaso un poco menos: noventa y nueve años.
¿O un mes? Pudiera ser. En cualquier forma,
un tiempo enorme, enorme, enorme…

Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista, Cuba National Poet, was born on July 10, 1902, in Camagüey, Cuba. He was one of the greatest authors of the Cuban arts and one of the most important person within the Spanish language. He died in Havana on July 17, 1989 after a long disease.

Love is one of the most transcendental topics in Nicolás Guillén’s poetry, sometimes more lyric and some others more realistic, but always with a magnitude that reveals the whole romantic world of his verse. Although in almost all the poet’s books you can find compositions dedicated or related to love in a way, it was not until 1964 that one of them got released dedicated exclusively to that topic. It occurred when Fayad Jamís, poet and editor, published the number 6 of Ediciones La Tertulia, Poemas de amor book, in which 24 known and unedited texts were included. El corazón con que vivo, edition to which 16 more texts were added up, appeared in 1975.

Gullén’s loving poetry has also been published in anthologies inside and outside Cuba, as in the famous anthology Poesias de amor hispanoamericanas, by Mario Benedetti, in which it is included the title Mi chiquita that belongs to the book Motivos de son. All this is possible, as it has been said by some intellectual people who have studied Guillén´s poetry, since his works are characterized by a diversity of topics: Eros, woman, race, sensuality and other carnalities as double moral, texts also known as madrigales, in which according to poetess Nancy Morejón… “Guillén faces the esthetical battle of the black man to recover his beauty, corrupted and demoted by the system. And the woman is the most suitable way to carry out such esthetical recognition

Tu vientre sabe más que tu cabeza / y tanto como tus muslos.
Esa es la fuerte gracia negra / de tu cuerpo desnudo.
Signo de selva el tuyo, / con tus collares rojos,
tus brazaletes de oro curvo, / y ese caimán oscuro
nadando en el Zambeze de tus ojos.

The new edition of Poemas de amor, that was published by Editorial Unión at the beginning of the new century, on the occasion of the centennial of his birthday, was prefaced and compiled by Angel Augier, poet and intellectual. The critic has considered it as the work in which the magnitude of his texts about love is best perceived, due to the appearing of all his poetic work, putting together diverse topics and styles. En algun sitio de la primavera is the name of the composition that closes this volume. This poem was written on April 1966, but does not appear publicly until 1992; since then it has been published four times in Cuba. This poem is one of Guillén’s greatest loving text, it is the poem of abandon and love permanency after death, another Guillén’s great topic.

The editorial success of the anthology Poemas de amor shows that the loving work of the Poet reaches a preferable place on people and market, whether it is about the body and the thousand forms of Eros, or a private and spacious place, but it will always has its location somewhere in the springtime. Investigator Roberto Zurbano Torres wrote… “ His love poems: clear, sensitive, with an organic seduction capacity, charming and musical words, written not to be thought but to be shared, said loudly or exclaimed to someone with certain urgency or barefacedly…”

Verla partir y amarla como nunca; / seguirla con los ojos,
y ya sin ojos seguir viéndola lejos, / allá lejos, y aun seguirla
más lejos todavía, / hecha de noche,
de mordedura, beso, insomnio, / veneno, éxtasis, convulsión,
suspiro, sangre, muerte...
Hecha de esa sustancia conocida / con que amasamos una estrella

The Armónico of Compay

Cuba is known by its reach, varied and great musical tradition worldwide. Many of its musicians have set patterns inside and outside the country. One of them is Máximo Francisco Repilado Muñoz. Fourth son of a rural family with no musical antecedents. Compay Segundo*, as he was known later, was born in Siboney, near the western city of Santiago de Cuba, where his family moved when he was 9 years old. He learned the cigar maker and barber jobs, and at the same time he attended some solfa and clarinet lessons. He became a premature autodidactic tres and guitar player, instruments from which he took the most convenient features for him to invent his inseparable armónico. However, the most intense school of Repilado was undoubtedly his entering in Santiago´s bohemian life from the '20s on, where the most prestigious trova signers of Santiago de Cuba, as Sindo Garay, Matamoros, could be found, who suddenly noticed that the “boy” played a “odd guitar” (armónico) skillfully and had a second voice, whose expression and resources will make it very well known at passing time. At the beginning of the '30s last century, Cuarteto Cubanacan came to be the first formation in which Compay gave free rein to the sonority of his armónico.

When Repilado invents the armónico in 1924, his idea was to create a new instrument with tres and guitar that is a guitar with octaves, and a seventh cord in the middle. Once, Compay said that since he was young he was concerned about the harmonic combination between tres and guitar: “The tres' notes are not natural, it produces the sound by octaves, so I found a way to widen the sounds using seven cords; the armónico is my creation and it is a guitar of six cords and another guitar that repeats sol note to achieve more harmony…I decided to create an armónico of six cords. It is a guitar with six cords and repeating sol cord to achieve a more harmonic sound. So that its name…” Compay also played bongos and tumbas, and was pioneer in the introduction of a band of clarinets as essential companion in son bands.

The legend of Compay Segundo - died in Havana on July 14, 2003 at the age of 95 years- attracted all the audiences not only for his contribution to the Cuban musical staff, but also because he established a unprecedented mark: he was the most veteran signer on active service of the world, and at the same time, the one who offered the biggest number of concerts- in more cities and countries- and sold the biggest amount of discs after the 90 years old. His majesty is completed with authoring catalogue with more than 100 songs including guarachas, boleros and sones. Compay shared scenes with important musicians from Cuba and the world, reaching the top when he won the Grammy Award in 1997, with the CD Buena Vista Social Club in the traditional category.

* According to Repilado’s words… “The name Compay came later, in 1942…I became Compay Segundo due to my voice, because I am baritone. Why Compay? Because it is a custom that friends say hi like this in the western part of the country. Then I formed Dúo Los Compadres, in which the prime voice was made by Lorenzo Hierrezuelo and I was the second voice, thereof the name Compay Segundo".

The Pharaoh of Cuba

José Antonio Méndez said about Sindo in 1988: “He has a sui generis way of harmonizing his songs. When professors saw his works, they could not do less than to become astonished of that a man that did not know about music may use those resources as Sindo Garay did it. His harmonic sequences made the intellectuals be surprised when the canon established by the great music schools were broken Sindo made a series of combinations very persona, and above all he used the bass in a peculiar way. He must conclude that actually Sindo Garay was a real genius”.

Sindo Garay was baptized as The great Pharaoh of Cuba by Federico García Lorca, and he is one of the supreme trova signers of the Cuban music. He sang for 89 years of his long life. Autodidactic, he had an extraordinary intuition. He frequently used chromaticism in correct and surprising way. For all this it is not wonder that we still hear him traveling through time in each guitar that turns into poetry and in each cord that becomes melody.

* The artistic name adopted by the trova signer, though it is strange and suggestive, is translated as: Sindo, aboriginal, clever and brave siboney; Garay, pure Spanish, verse of romance, XVI century. He died at the age of 101 years, on July 17, 1968.