Pepe was a trova musician and singer with a baritone voice along with being an excellentguitarist, creator and bandleader. Maritza Puig
Jose “Pepe” Sanchez
March 19 marked the 150 th anniversary of the birth of the Afro- Cuban quintessence-Jose “Pepe” Sanchez, the acclaimed godfather of the bolero. Special tribute was paid to the balladeer at this year’s 44 th International Trova Festival that bears his name. Dozens of trova musicians, traditional music groups and musicologists from Cuba, Spain and Japan recently converged on Santiago to participate in concerts, dances and debates.
Many of us in the English speaking Caribbean and the diaspora may well ask as to- what is the bolero?
The bolero is a song of feelings, seduction and dance. The guitar is the essence of the genre. Many of us have seen the movie of a Spanish guitarist singing beneath the window, serenading and trying to woo and win the hands of a senorita. Then there is the opera of Carmen or indeed its expression is found in Mario Lanza’s Student Prince. Granma International staff writer ,Mireya Castenda defines the bolero succinctly: It is the music of seduction and desire, of closeness and absence. Its message? Romantic, imagined, forbidden or joyful love.
Historians traced its origin to Spain , in the late18th Century especially to Majorca where it was a type of group folkloric dance. It came to Cuba and Latin America in particular Mexico through Spanish colonialism and the natives and local slaves adapted it with their own form of interpretation. The bolero can be considered the mother of Latin American art form –song and dance. It has impacted on parang and the slow rhythmic steps parallel that of the Rumba,ChaChaCha and Mambo.
Although the music is largely part of the Spanish speaking world it has also impacted on the English speaking counties. It said that Paul McCartney’s Yesterday had a distinct flavour of bolero. Here in Jamaica one of our most popular has adopted the name Sanchez as part of his respect and admiration of the Cuban bolero . His two chart toppers Lonely wont leave me alone & Never dis a man are very much in the mode of a bolero. Another kind of bolero is the American style ballroom dance.
The son of an ex-slave, the bard of the bolero was born in Cuba’s eastern province of Santiago on March 19,1885.Pepe Sanchez only had an elementary education and served his apprenticeship as a tailor. He was fortunate to have been born in the musical heartland of Cuba, the cradle of singing and trova whose story telling troubadors brought a particular style of music and dance to the bolero. He is credited with the oldest known classical anthem of the bolero Tristesas composed in 1885. Together with Jose Marti’s Guantanamera, Pepe’s Tristesas is the most popular folk song in Cuba. Some of his songs , gurachas and boleros include Pobre Arista,Cuando oi la expression de tu canto, Elvira, Caridad, Esperanza and Himno a Maceo.
Jose Sanchez is credited with bringing dynamism and creativity to the genre and traveled to Mexico where he enthralled the Viceroy and audiences of Mexico City . Whilst the authorship is distinctly Cuban, composers such as the brilliant Mexican Agustin Lara, and the very significant Raphael Hernandez and Pedro Flores of Puerto Rico, have stamped it with their personal hallmark
Today the bolero has become universal success in movies,video games,jazz music The form of the genre however has been changing from a slow to a fast moving pace to meet the needs of a young generation.
Like Paul Robeson ,Sanchez keeps rolling along as an old man river.
It is hoped that our own Winty Davis will one day pay tribute to the bolero in his musical Wings of Songs.
