CubaPLUS Magazine

These days the country vibrates to the beat of the extensive artistic and literary programming, emphatic in history, legends and traditions, which began on October 10 in honor of the Cry of Independence and will reach its peak on the 20th, Cuban Culture Day.

With this, the glorious day in which the people of Bayamo sang for the first time, on a similar date in 1868, the combat song later converted into the National Anthem of all those born in this land, is also venerated. It was the victorious day of the capture of the insurgent eastern city by the Liberation Army under the command of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and the birth of the Republic in Arms.

Cubans find it exalting the fact their foundation as a nation is inextricably related to history, culture and especially music, inalienable components of the Creole soul that lived at that time, and has always repeated it, since the past decade of the 80s, the crackles of the crystallization of their identity. Pedro Figueredo y Cisneros (Perucho), also a patriot from Bayamo, a lawyer, musician and writer involved in the revolutionary maelstrom, was the first to compose the music for the war march that should urge his compatriots to fight on August 13, 1867.

He had it orchestrated by a musician friend and had the guts to present it in the Greater Church before the Governor, who immediately caught its subversive rhythm. But it is a legend, and one of the most beautiful in Cuba, that Perucho wrote the verses and stanzas in one go from the back of his horse, in the midst of the crowd that cheered the triumph of the mambises in the streets, that unforgettable 20th of October.

For many years the nation has revered its origins with the display of all the wealth in the field of ethics and principles began to be promoted, as never before in its history, starting on January 1, 1959. This year in particular, the 120th anniversary of the National Poet Nicolás Guillén and painter Wifredo Lam, 100 years of poets Carilda Oliver and Jesús Orta Ruiz, singer Merceditas Valdés, and prestigious writers and artists Fina García Marruz, Aurora Basnuevo, Mario Balmaseda,Cosme Proenza, Carlos Trillo and Eugenio Hernández. Not everything has been memory and homage, a multitude of exhibitions, new publications, theatrical presentations, TV series, movies and the National Ballet of Cuba, Festival of the Muñequitos de Matanzas, release of records and new productions, they have enlivened us and  challenged by harsh contingencies. Cuba continues to save its culture. Long live!