Paraphrasing the first stanzas of the simple verses of the Cuban poet José Martí, the popular Cuban song Guantanamera has been the epicenter of various controversies about its authorship.
The first theory is officially attributed to José Fernández Díaz, better known as Joseíto Fernández who told different versions of the origin of the song on various occasions. One of the most repeated was the one he declared for the correspondence section of the magazine Bohemia, in which he stated: “And one day, Facundo Rivero, our pianist, came up with the idea that at the end of the program that we were broadcasting on CMCO (…) we would do it with a guajira. (…) Then I composed the “Guajira Guantanamera.” And the success surprised us all. (…) This happened back in 1934.”
The second theory is that the famous song originated in Guantanamo on a Saturday in July 1929, where a group of friends were working and singing. They saw a beautiful woman pass by and flirted with her in a completely polite way. But she responded offended, so one of the friends refuted him in a very Cuban way: “Hey, what does this Guantanamera guajira think she is!” Among the group of friends was Herminio García Wilson, nicknamed “El Diablo” (The Devil), who according to this theory was the one who looked for music to accompany his friend’s exclamation, and played it that same night during a party.
The third theory has a tone: it is said that originally, the lyrics of “Guantanamera” were written inspired by the story of a woman who gets tired and leaves her man after being mistreated, possibly in the form of infidelity.
The Guantanamera tune is perhaps the best-known Cuban song and has been performed by several singers and musical groups: José Feliciano, Julio Iglesias, Luciano Pavarotti , Rubén Rada, Pete Seeger, and even Pau Donés and Celia Cruz have a version of the song together in Pavarotti & Friends. The famous melody of the song resonates even on the pitches. It has also been used by many football fans in England, Italy, and Spain, among other countries, to dedicate different chants to their teams, their rivals, or the referees.
It is likely that the popularization of “Guantanamera” among football fans in non-Hispanic countries is related to the success and diffusion of recordings by American musicians in the 1960s, particularly those by Pete Seeger (1963) and The Sandpipers (1966). The latter reached the top ten in the charts in 1966, the year England won its only World Cup. We can safely say that Guantanamera is Cuba’s most universal song.
El Grito 