If he hadn't written some of the most extraordinary novels in our language on XX century, hadn't left us the vast and deep reasons of the marvelous real, hadn't touched as nobody the climax of the American sensibility, we would have found anyway enough reasons to praise in Alejo Carpentier his prodigious forays onto the music domains.

Powerful motives help us to assure the presence in his works of three essential contributions to Cuban music: He was the most seasoned critic of his epoch, founder, together with Fernando Ortiz of the musicological perspective over which the successive conquests in our medium were established and the major promoter of the real Cuban modernity regarding to music.

Long before the novelist won fame because of his books –trajectory anticipated by his debut work Ecué Yamba O!—, an essay published in 1946 by the Fund of Economic Culture in Mexico definitely credited Carpentier as leader of a founding act: The music in Cuba.

All those interested in the musicological and critic work of the Cuban writer can trace the Zoila Gomez's compilation under the title Ese músico que llevo dentro (The musician I carry inside) –Three tomes published by Letras Cubanas in 1980-, the pages on this topic gathered in Crónicas (Art and Literature, 1975), and the interesting collection compiled by Silvana Garriga and Radamé Giro entitled Temas de la Lira y el Bongó (Melodies for Lira and Bongó) (Letras Cubanas, 1994).

However, as a prearranged essayist body, The Music in Cuba gains, with time, additional values. Nothing similar had been published before: a history of Cuban music transcending the mere enumeration.

Is well known the Carpentier`s compromise with Amadeo Roldán an Alejandro García Caturla, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Edgar Varese and Darius Milhaud. Certainly, the musician Carpentier`s major topic was the reflection about the American identity and its insertion within the contemporary universality and his great obsession, the dispute between tradition and newness.

The Carpentier`s anticipation is also worthy to be highlighted. Juan Blanco remembers how in the early 60s, when the writer came back from Caracas to join the revolutionary alluvion, he used to sponsor auditions with the Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen`s novelties which opened for new Cuban composers the route of the electroacoustic procedures.

Marta Rojas has told us about the Alejo`s humility, when, being already a notable man in 1977, he submitted himself to the space tyranny and wrote in a faultless way, an eighty-lines chronicle, promptly sent by telex before the closing time to be published in Granma, a tight and substantial material narrating the event that rose the Cuban pianist above the field at one of the most demanding European contests.

Along with the musician we have seen here in scarce lines, there's another one with the ear in harmony with the popular magma. He enjoyed pregones and guarachas in the streets of Havana during his teen years. Roused by his relation with Caturla, he drank from primitive sources the day to day befall of Yoruba and Bantú music in town hall and solares. Once he was settled in Paris, safe from the arrest order dictated against him by the Machado tyranny's assassins, he managed to present to the French critic and intellectuality the Son and Rumba boom. He inserted also Eliseo Grenet within La Coupole and gave testimony of El Manisero`s success penned by Simmons. Enjoyed the Emilio Barreto and Julio Cueva`s early jazzist trends and praised the peerless Sindo Garay`s boleros.

Maybe an Alejo`s material talking about his wide critic spectrum regarding to Cuban popular music remains almost undisclosed. In 1963, the UNEAC, where he served as vice-president, convoked to a symposium about the Filin. He readily offered his contribution like the others. From a close examination, we can notice the simply brightening character of his view regarding to this movement of the Cuban song: The Filin, as he expressed in that occasion, has the advantage of helping us to improve the lyrics of songs, which sometimes are a little bit silly. Otherwise, a certain freedom in the creation, aided by feeling, depends on the talent. Is a way of singing like some others, having antecedents that in any way can't threaten the Cuban taste of the music. The Cuban music`s history has proved that influences have always been defeated by the Cuban strength, the vitality of our accent and artists.

A year after Pablo Milanés, transfigured the Filin into Nueva Trova with Mis 22 años. Alejo recognized the expertise of José Antonio Méndez, César Portillo de la Luz and Marta Valdés.

As a proverb, I just want to reformulate a statement owning to Carpentier. In the dedicatory note of the chronicle entitled Temas de la Lira y el Bongó, published on Carteles Magazine in 1929, he wrote: ‘'For Doctor Fernando Ortiz, more musician than many of our musicians''. He acknowledged in this way, the foundational labor of the notable polygraph in the discovery of the Afrocuban tradition. We can state for sure in our days that for Cuban culture, Alejo Carpentier is one of the paradigms of the musician he represents.

By Pedro de La Hoz, published in Juventud Rebelde Newspaper