Keywords
Joseíto Fernández
Julián Orbón
Song Guantanamera
Pete Seeger
Cuban Goverment
cultural policy
wrong authorship attribution
How to Cite
Abstract
An analysis of bibliography, phonograms and scores documenting the genesis of the well–known Cuban folk song Guantanamera, reveals the identity of its true author, and demonstrates the causes of the uncertainty that surrounds the authorship of the famous setting of José Marti’s poem. The author of this article concludes that the piece is an original creation of the Cuban–Hispanic composer Julián Orbón (1925–1991), rather than Joseíto Fernández, to whom it has been repeatedly attributed.The article concludes as well, that the melody of the tune known as Guajira guantanamera –made famous as a setting of improvised decasyllabic verses, and also attributed to Joseíto Fernández– is completely different from the one used by Orbón, which was the one internationalized by Pete Seeger with Marti’s words.Political causes motivated Cuban government to broadcast (wrongly) that the author of the tune, with words by José Martí, known as Guantanamera is Joseíto Fernández, and that Julián Orbón was responsible only for the setting of Martí’s poem to Fernández melody.This journal is registered under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. Thus, this work may be reproduced, distributed, and publicly shared in digital format, as long as the names of the authors and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana are acknowledged. Others are allowed to quote, adapt, transform, auto-archive, republish, and create based on this material, for any purpose, provided the authorship is duly acknowledged, a link to the original work is provided, and it is specified if changes have been made. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana does not hold the rights of published works and the authors are solely responsible for the contents of their works; they keep the moral, intellectual, privacy, and publicity rights.
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