Boleros
| Bolero | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins | Contradanza, Sevillana and Arabic music (Spain), Spanish bolero and Afro-Caribbean music (Cuba) |
| Cultural origins | late 18th century (Spain), last quarter of 19th century, Santiago (Cuba) |
| Fusion genres | |
| Bachata | |
| Regional scenes | |
| Spain, Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico and rest of Latin America | |
Bolero is a genre of slow-tempo Latin music and its associated dance. There are Spanish and Cuban forms which are both significant and which have separate origins.
The term is also used for some art music. In all its forms, the bolero has been popular for over a century.
The original Spanish bolero is a 3/4 dance that originated in Spain in the late 18th century, a combination of the contradanza and the sevillana.
In Cuba, the bolero was perhaps the first great Cuban musical and vocal synthesis to win universal recognition. In 2/4 time, this dance music spread to other countries, leaving behind what Ed Morales has called the "most popular lyric tradition in Latin America".
The Cuban bolero tradition originated in Santiago de Cuba in the last quarter of the 19th century; it does not owe its origin to the Spanish music and song of the same name. In the 19th century there grew up in Santiago de Cuba a group of itinerant musicians who moved around earning their living by singing and playing the guitar.
Pepe Sanchez is known as the father of the trova style and the creator of the Cuban bolero. Untrained, but with remarkable natural talent, he composed numbers in his head and never wrote them down. As a result, most of these numbers are now lost, but two dozen or so survive because friends and students wrote them down. He was the model and teacher for the great trovadores who followed.
The Cuban bolero has traveled to Puerto Rico and the rest of Latin America after its conception, where it became part of their repertoires. Some of the bolero's leading composers have come from nearby countries, as in the case of the prolific Puerto Rican composer Rafael Hernández and the Mexican Agustín Lara. Some Cuban composers of the bolero are primarily considered trovadores. Boleros saw a resurgence in popularity during the 1990s when Mexican singer Luis Miguel was credited for reviving interest in the bolero genre following the release Romance.
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Wikipedia