By: Verónica Fernández Díaz

José Marín Varona is a musician from Camagüey in whose wide compositional repertoire several works with patriotic themes stand out. Among them, two versions of the Anthem of Bayamo, works that due to their importance will be briefly analyzed with the aim of showing the elements that identify them.

What motivated the versions of the anthem and what are its distinctive features?

Apparently the main inspiration for Varona was a contest announced in Cuba Musical around 1900, in which the creation “… of a Cuban National Anthem with the same meter as La Bayamesa” was requested; issue that identifies the versions of Camagüeyano. Other composers wrote about the reduction of stanzas adopted by Emilio Agramonte Piña, in the anthem published by José Martí in the Patria newspaper in 1892 —the closest to the current National Anthem— or about the verses rewritten in 1869 by Perucho Figueredo, which were not made public until the beginning of the 20th century, in an issue of the Cuba Musical magazine of 1903, already directed by Marín Varona.

Compared to Emilio Agramonte’s version, the versions of the anthem performed by Marín Varona present only slight variations in the melody and a harmonization closer to the song than to the warrior song, in contrast to the rhythm of the melodic line. Interesting aspects in these versions are, in turn, the various editions of it. Each one, adding different musical aspects.

The most outstanding difference between the versions of Varona is found in the introduction: one of them with an energetic, figurative style in contrast to the other with a martial character; this indisputably influenced what is currently known and which we owe to the composer José Antonio Rodríguez Ferrer. That is why the Camagüeyan versions are considered an indispensable link in the definitive profile of the anthem that identifies the Cuban people.

Bibliography

GÓMEZ CAIRO, Jesús: Creación, realización y desarrollo de La Bayamesa, Himno de Bayamo, Himno Nacional de Cuba. Intervención del musicólogo Jesús Gómez Cairo, Director del Museo Nacional de la Música con motivo del 145 aniversario de la primera interpretación pública de La Bayamesa.

MARÍN VARONA, José: Revista Cuba Musical, 1903-1905.

OROZCO, Delio G.: “Notas para repensar el Himno Nacional de Cuba” en, Clave No.1, año 3, 2001. Pp.10-16

Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García