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We would like to dedicate the main article to Longina 2008 National Meeting of Troubadours held in Santa Clara and to one of its main figures, composer Manuel Corona; we will be also talking about plastic artist Amelia Peláez in her birthday anniversary and, last but not least, we will be remembering Ñico Saquito's 106th birthday.

We are at the doors of Manuel Corona's fifty-five death anniversary, one of the main founders of the Cuban trova song book, and on these days, as it has been happening for the last 10 years, young troubadours meet in Santa Clara, especially in his hometown, Caibarien, to make eloquent the presence of man proverbial need to express feelings accompanied by his guitar.

He was born on June 17, 1880, inside a humble family that moved into Havana before last century ends (…) Once in the capital he worked as cigar maker but quickly he dedicate himself to the trova living an intense bohemian life that allowed him to know the most important names within this genre and also to be admired by Havana's bars and cafes public.

Manuel Corona is the author of many of those Cuban songs that come out our lips like a wild flower because they have been part of the spiritual support of Cubanhood. Longina, Santa Cecilia, Mercedes, Las flores del Edén, La Alfonsa , Una mirada, Adriana, Aurora and Doble inconsciencia are some of these songs.

(…) Despite he was recognized as one of the greatest artists of Cuban trova, next to Sindo Garay, Rosendo Ruiz and Adalberto Villalón, he died very poor on January 9, 1950 in a precarious room located in Mariano beach.

It is not possible to change his sad ending but we can immortalize his memory with his songs and actions by younger creators, like Longina Festival organized by Hermanos Saíz Association every year with the support of the Culture Department of Villa Clara.


Longina National Festival of Young Trova  

With the participation of young troubadours from all over the country, it is being held the Ninth Edition of Longina National Festival of Young Trova in Villa Clara, mainly in Santa Clara and Caibarien, Manuel Corona´s hometown.

There will be also activities in other towns like Sagua and Cifuentes. Pável Poveda gave a concert on the opening day at Decorative Art Museum of Santa Clara and then during the closing day there will be concerts by Ariel Díaz, Eduardo Sosa and Frank Delgado.

(…) In this moment there are many troubadours performing in other places of Santa Clara like popular Mejunje and also in spontaneous descargas; other artists like Roly, Diego Cano, Diego Gutiérrez, Fernando Bécquer among others, are also there.

The 55 th death anniversary of Manuel Corona is on January 9, so the participants of the Festival and the people from Caibarien in general will participate in the pilgrimage to his sepulture.


Taken from article by Bladimir Zamora, published at La Jiribilla.

The best guarachero of the world: Ñico Saquito

Undoubtedly the best guarachero of the world is our Ñico Saquito, the greatest cultivator of the Cuban guaracha. It is not necessary to think hard to come to that conclusion.

Benito Antonio Fernández is the name of this brilliant composer (…) Ñico Saquito, as he is known worldwide, gave us these anthological pieces full of mischievous statements and the most tactful double meaning: Cuidaíto Compay Gallo or María Cristina me quiere gobernar, from the typical Cuban tavern, with its bar, its pleasing barman and a cool beer.

His influence in all Cuban music is unavoidable as well as his signal on what we call today salsa and timba. Ñico Saquito is known as the maximum exponent of the guaracha , Cuban musical genre characterized by a pleasant line, included laughable situations taken to the music through some mischievous statements and the structure related to the son , which gives acceptance and authenticity expressed in all salsa songs' choruses.

(…) His creations have remained through time in the repertoire of great artists such as Benny Moré, Compay Segundo, Ignacio Piñeiro Septet, Cheo Feliciano, Osca D´León just to mention some. Many Latin-American films have his work included in their soundtracks.

Ñico Saquito was born in the warm Caribbean city of Santiago de Cuba on January 17, 1902 (…). In the ´40s he joined the Típico Oriental Group directed by Guillermo Mozo and performed at the exclusive night club Montmatre in Havana.

(…) According to his own words, he was nicknamed Ñico Saquito due to his skills to play baseball; “he never loose a ball, someone said, he seems to have a small bag on his hand when playing baseball”, and thus he kept that name.

In 1979 although Ñico Saquito was already sick, he recorded an anthological CD with troubadour Eliades Ochoa, who was also born in Santiago de Cuba . The album is still in use by new generations and deep-rooted Cuban musicians such as NG La Banda, Los Van Van and Adalberto Álvarez y su Son. (…)

Taken from an article by Jesús Risquet published at Trabajadores.

Amelia Peláez: Spirituana and universal

Amelia was able to keep the purism of colors, insolent reverberation of the tropical light and the outdoors chromatism from her father's house in Yaguajay, province of Sancti Spiritus , where she spent all her youth. Later she should master the talent, repress the excess of criollo baroque style, civilize her passion for light and colors that would characterized her work forever.

The academy offered her an impasse of reasonableness in the shadow of Romañach, but Europe welcomed Amelia convinced of her presages; she always know what she wanted, always did what she thought and then disagreements about the cubist solid geometry with the Paris School came to happen. All that made a deep impression on her poetics as beginner and then transcended all her mature work.

She came back as enthusiastic as someone who is ready for the symbiosis in a world of multiple meanings: European discipline skills to control the excess of tropical sensualism, the shining light, life experience in her province and in the island in general.

Then she used all the motives given by the context, like a geometrical problem is solved: fruits, flowers, architecture and ornaments, and tighten them in a black, powerful and thick line. She made her way to posterity beginning Cubanhood painting, opening the doors of modernity with her criolla and multicolored palette.

Those, who have wanted to see vain imitations of the decorativism on her work, forget the pleasure imposed by the audience; they see an ambiguous signal of that first meeting with the Cubanhood in the sensual line of the baroque style, in the ornamental richness and the purism of the colors; they forget how “daily things lose their incidental and ephemeral character to become an autochthonous monument. Sometimes the balance among decorum, argument and sensuality excess is restored this way”.

Amelia Peláez del Casal, Spirituana and universal, painter, ceramist, illustrator, mural technique sculptress, could not have painted in any other place of the world for one imponderable reason: the pure light of her Cubanhood.

Article by Manuel Echevarría Gómez, published at Escambray.