DAY OF THE CUBAN CULTURE is officially marked and celebrated in Cuba, originated as a tribute to the first time that was interpreted the Hymn of Bayamo, later the National Hymn. Event that expressed independence spirit in its flaming music and patriotic poetry through a sublime form of art, as is music.

That event left a remarkable mark in the Cuban history, October 20th, 1868, ten years after initiating the libertarian fight that is known in Cuban history as the War of the Ten Years.
In this time Ignacio Cervantes, a recognized composer and pianist, was 21 years old.

It says that the young musician was expelled from the Island to offer concerts to benefit of the insurgents, in 1876.
Afterwards, Salomón Gadles Mikowky would write in his thesis of doctorate in music at the University of Columbia: The answer of Cervantes could seem romantic for the ears of his contemporaries, when he declaring his intentions to travel to the United States, “where I will continue helping the Revolution with my concerts”.

The Cuban in Cervantes

Cervantes is not a classic in the sense to belong to this artistic current of the history of music but his work represents a model in the way to do the traditional artistic form.
He belongs to the group of Cuban musical authors, who did, of the popular, stuff for art and Cuban identity.
Among his contemporaries, he would be placed at the end of the musical evolution of nationalistic group that closes his cycle in the century XIX. Offering the same solution that - for the following century - would have to find Alexander Garcia Caturla, in the second folkloric period.

When Cervantes appeared, the contradanza arrived at the limit of its possibilities. Meanwhile, he broke with tradition and worked with own ideas.
Then, his Cuban feel is much more subtle. Not in vain, Alejo Carpentier would affirm that the nationalism must consider an expression personal, a kind of personal sensitivity, so to speak.
Later on, the musician, Orlando Martinez wrote that in Cervantes, the national never is a suggestion nor an estimate, but achievement and reality.
A prolific composer of century XIX indicated the way to surpass the first period, almost documentary reference on folkloric topic, and to express the same reality from a polished and own vision, to represent the Cuban spirituality.

His works, written a long time ago, still achieve delight with relevance on the national great seal that distinguished them.
For that reason, today his work is studying in the schools and music conservatories. The consecrated still using his scores and his books are reedited. Moreover, his Good bye to Cuba is remaining in the music of Strawberry and Chocolate film (1993), directed by Thomas Gutiérrez Alea, where the subject of the relation between nationalism and emigration is one of the central subject. It is one hundred years since Cervantes's death and he continues being a symbol of Cuba, within the Cuban cultural ample spectrum.

By Ariel Pérez Lazo. Source: CMFB site National Radio Musical