Bolero                                             

    The bolero was born in Cuba’s eastern city of Santiago. Unlike some other genres, the bolero has been assigned a precise moment of creation: the composition of the first bolero, Tristezas, by Pepe Sánchez, in 1883 or a little later. Like other kinds of music, however, it was not born in a vacuum, unrelated to prior genres. Its origins go back—at least by name—to the Spanish bolero, a light dance in 3/4 time. Unexpectedly, it also derives in a way from the English country dance, which became known in French as contradanse. French colonists, escaping from the Haitian revolution across the straits from eastern Cuba, brought with them the music, which in Spanish became contradanza. From the Cuban contradanza, or simply danza, as the analogous forms are also called in Puerto Rico and Mexico, came the trova, the traditional song of the guitar-playing troubadour from the east of the island. The danza was also the basis of the habanera, which was so named not in Cuba, but in Europe, when the rhythm crossed the ocean. The first published habanera, La Pimienta, was written in 1836. In 1884, around the time that Sánchez writes his bolero, Sebastian Yradier’s La Paloma, a classic habanera, is becoming a hit in Mexico and in the U.S.
    A slow-paced and romantic music, the bolero does not attract young performers today as it might have in the past. Still, in recent years, established and market-conscious performers like Luis Miguel and Ana Gabriel, in Mexico, and Gloria Estefan in the U.S., have returned to the bolero, while the three young men of Los Tri-O in Colombia have surprised many with their recreation of the style of Los Panchos.  Before them, Peruvian Tania Libertad, settled in Mexico, drew a mass following with her renditions of boleros. Just as it derived from other genres that preceded it, the bolero evolved into or influenced the development of subsequent forms. A natural line of evolution leads from the bolero to the Cuban fílin ("feeling"), a blend of ballad, bolero, and jazz that was identified most with Elena Burke until her recent death, but also with performers such as Pablo Milanés. The Dominican bachata likely derives from the bolero. What is more, the English-speaking world was not exempt from being influenced by the bolero. As an example, it has been said that the beguine was the U.S.’s answer to the bolero, although the beguine comes from Martinique. In any case, it is not hard to relate the typical sound of a bolero to the music of Begin the Beguine or of Night and Day, big-band tunes composed at a time when the bolero had already grown into a similar format. The lyrics of the first of these hint at the source of their inspiration: "When they begin the beguine/ It brings back the sound of music so tender/ It brings back a night of tropical splendor/ It brings back a memory ever green...." Similarly on the other side of the ocean: fans of the Beatles may scoff at the notion that Paul McCartney wrote boleros, but they would be hard-pressed to categorize the music of Yesterday in terms other than a bolero.

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