To Fornaris we owe, first of all, La Bayamesa; but also other exaltations, of those that, with the magic of art, forge us and make us proud.
Sometimes creators have many great works. Others, a few. Sometimes one is enough to earn them a place in the souls of their audiences, of their people, of history.
Let us think of a text written by José Fornaris, a patrician from Bayamon who died 134 years ago in September. Let’s try it out and ask a Cuban – and set it to music – if he or she knows a song that begins: Do you not remember, gentle Bayamese… There will be those who do not know it, but they will be the fewest. Most will not only nod, but, arguing the answer, will continue what follows that initial verse that makes up what is considered the first song of the Cuban trova.
La Bayamesa de Fornaris (there are others of that name in our music) is also known as the 1851 song. It was inspired by a beautiful pro-independence woman, married to Francisco del Castillo. It was precisely her husband who asked his friends – and patriots like him – José Fornaris and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, to help him make a song to reconcile with Luz Vázquez, because at the time they were upset.
Fornaris wrote the lyrics, and Castillo and Céspedes did the music. Soon the work was a fact and, a few days later, Luz listened from her window to the beautiful song performed in the presence of its creators by tenor Carlos Pérez, accompanied by a guitar.
The song became popular, and over time, in an environment inflamed by the desire for freedom, La Bayamesa acquired new meanings. «In the homes of Mambi women, in Cuba and in exile, they continued to sing La Bayamesa de Fornaris, Castillo and Céspedes. (…) In the face of the absent homeland, it was the lullaby of Cuban expatriate mothers,» says Dr Eduardo Torres-Cuevas, who explains that this was revealed by Amparo Torres Alciniega, great-great-granddaughter of Pedro Figueredo, who was put to sleep with this song when she was a child. The revolution by force of arms,» Torres-Cuevas continues, «was also the result of the cultural and patriotic revolution of musicians, poets and writers, who not only expressed themselves in political terms, but through all cultural and spiritual manifestations and from the heart. The Bayamesa of Fornaris, Céspedes and Castillo has been its most permanent manifestation».
In 1855, Fornaris published Cantos del siboney, which made him the leading exponent of siboneyismo and the most popular of the island’s poets. The information contained in the title El libro en Cuba (The book in Cuba), a copious investigation by Ambrosio Fornet, speaks of the unique reception of the collection of poems, considered the first great Cuban best-seller, because «until then there had only been best-sellers restricted to the Havana-Matanzas market», and it was «above all a sociological phenomenon». The reading public «recognised the embryonic symbols of nationality as their own».
For its creator, Cantos del siboney enjoyed such favour because of its political symbolism, because in his opinion, the Siboney Indians, whom he sang about in the work, were seen by readers as the oppressed Cubans.
Other of his lyrical works include his poetry collections Flores y lágrimas, Cantos tropicales, El arpa del hogar and El libro de los amores. He was a teacher, journalist and playwright, and in this field he wrote La hija del pueblo (The People’s Daughter) and Amor y sacrificio (Love and Sacrifice). His dramatic texts have been endorsed on a par with those of Avellaneda and José Joaquín Lorenzo Luaces.
For many, he was not a major poet, although Samuel Feijóo considered that, because of his work, «in his exaltation for all things Cuban, in his necessary patriotic fixation, he reaches into the bowels of the island’s sky».
Judged by some, revered by others, we owe Fornaris, first and foremost, La Bayamesa; but also other exaltations, the kind that, with the magic of art, forge us and make us proud.
