(Catalan havanera).
An Afro-Cuban dance and song.
A synthesis of European and African elements, the habanera (or Havana-style contredanse) has its roots in the English country dance, which gained great popularity in Europe in the 18th century. Although it was imported to the Americas by the Spanish, it did not take hold in Cuba until the arrival in the late 1700s and early 1800s of French refugees from rebellions in Haiti, who brought with them the contredanse, a stylized French version of the English country dance. In its basic form this early social dance consisted of two sections of eight bars each, repeated for a total of 32 bars, with each eight-bar segment distinguished by a different dance figure; the second half is livelier in character than the first. Black musicians transformed the regular rhythms of the contredanse into the dotted and syncopated rhythms of the contradanza habanera or simply habanera. Its slow tempo, in duple metre with a suave and lilting rhythmic ostinato (ex.1), became popular in all strata of society. The dance, performed by couples, features stately steps in which the feet are hardly lifted from the ground, accompanied by sensual movements of the arms, hips, head and eyes. Its influence can be seen in the evolution of the Cuban danzón and the Argentine tango, and it was influenced in turn by developments in the latter genre. In Spain it was also absorbed into the zarzuela.
The earliest surviving habanera is the anonymous San Pascual Bailón of 1803. In Cuba the popular dance was transmuted into an art form through the piano music of Manuel Saumell Robredo and, later, that of Ignacio Cervantes. The exotic character of the dance attracted many composers when it was re-exported to Europe in the 19th century. Renowned examples of the genre are La paloma by Sebastián Iradier and Tú by Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes. Bizet drew on Iradier’s El arreglito for the celebrated habanera in Carmen. Habanera rhythms found their way into French instrumental pieces by Saint-Saëns, Chabrier, Debussy and Ravel, among others, and also inspired Spanish composers including Albéniz, Falla and Montsalvatge.
Habanera is part of the rich liminal culture of ida y vuelta (‘going and returning’, ‘there and back’) that exists between Cuba and the Costa Brava through maritime trade and the navy. For that reason, although its origins lie in Catalan-speaking parts of the world, its texts are mostly Spanish. It was particularly significant at the end of the 19th century during the war of Cuban independence, when many Spaniards found themselves in a conflict of allegiance rooted in their personal lives. The songs tell of romantic relationships (mostly with the idealized mulata, the Cuban woman of mixed African and Hispanic blood), of sad farewell and of loneliness at sea, themes that support the notion that many men had families in both Spain and Cuba. The music has absorbed influences from the migration to Cuba of Andalucians and people from the Canary Islands, as well as Italian bel canto vocal style and other Mediterranean elements, and Afro-Cuban syncopations; it also shares common ground with traditions of Mallorca and Menorca in the Balearic Islands. Habanera is also sung in villages in Spanish Castile, brought there by returning sailors.
Originally performed both by solo singers and by groups of fishermen in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Catalonia, habaneras entered the repertory of choirs of fishermen who sang while mending nets or sitting in the tavern on days when the weather was too stormy for them to take to sea. While the tradition never died out, it has received a boost from Catalan autonomy within Spain and is now thriving: many young singers are taking it up, and there are regular summer festivals along the coast, notably in Calella de Palafrugell, attended mostly by Catalan and Spanish locals and tourists. Whereas the habanera in Catalonia has always remained a popular form, in Cuba it fed into the trova (troubadour) tradition, its strength lying more in popular-classical manifestations with bel canto influences persisting.
E. Sánchez de Fuentes: El folk-lor en la música cubana (Havana, 1923)
E. Grenet: Música popular cubana (Havana, 1939; Eng. trans., 1939)
A. Carpentier: La música en Cuba (Mexico, 1946, 3/1988)
J.S. Roberts: The Latin Tinge: the Impact of Latin American Music on the United States (New York, 1979, 2/1999)
N. Galán: Cuba y sus sones (Valencia, 1983)
A. León: Del canto y el tiempo (Havana, 2/1984)
P. Manuel: ‘The Anticipated Bass in Cuban Popular Music’, LAMR, vi (1985), 249–61
E. Pérez Sanjurjo: História de la música cubana (Miami, 1986)
P. Manuel: Popular Musics of the Non-Western World (New York, 1988)
T.P. Daniel: Castilla canta habaneras (Barcelona, 1991)
J. Pericot, F. Sirés and E. Morató: Calella de Palafrugell i les havaneres (Barcelona, 1991)
R. Balil and B. Lozoya: Las mas bellas habaneras (Barcelona,1995)
X. Febrés: Això és l’havanera (Barcelona, 1995)
P. Manuel, K. Bilby and M. Largey: Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae (Philadelphia, 1995)
C. Pérez Diz and others: L’havanera, un cant popular (Tarragona, 1995)
FRANCES BARULICH (1), JAN FAIRLEY (2)