The immigration that Cuba received when around the year of 1871 French contingents came to the island, specially to the oriental part, made an incision not only in the cultural enhancement but also in the development of those that in a way or another made art.

Undoubtedly, the Spanish music influence had already been inserted to our musical airs the taste of polos, tiranas, boleros, and later on an influence coming from the French Revolution in Latin America conformed the revolutionary song style.

Cuban creators, after being soared in all these artistic streams, created their own style, mainly the natives of Santiago de Cuba, where José 'Pepe' Sánchez is the main promoter. Taking this stream as starting point, the Cuban traditional troubadoresque song is enhanced in the hands of such remarkable sucessors as Antonio Gumersindo Garay García.

Sindo Garay was born on April 12th, 1867 in Santiago de Cuba. He did not know the most elementary notions about formal techniques of the music he created, despite this, his works were considered musically perfect. The oriental Bolero had in Sindo its best exponent because he imposed a peculiar style with the scratching of the guitar cords to finish musical phrases and the rhythmic base with the so-called cinquillo cubano.

As most of the Trova cultivators, Sindo worked on the song and made it with rhythmic freedom, although he also created criollas, guarachas, bambucos with Colombian influence, all this work was treated by him in an original way.

A great amount of Sindo's songs and boleros can even be imagined without the second voice of the melody, or the 'segundo' as he called it. He said that thirds 'fall by theirself', he was always looking for solutions from the interval of sixth. If we take into account how easy he used the main lows of his guitar, is not hard to find contemporany harmonic modulations. Without a doubt, as Stravinsky said, when a creator is at the same time an efficient performer, he is in the right conditions to create his work as he conceived it.
That was the case of our troubadour. Sindo`s handling of tunes and dynamics of their own creations is his another peculiar feature.

His music has been also influenced by Opera glimmers. According to the dates of reference, about the late XIX century, not other opera could be but the Italian, brought by the French immigration or others companies which worked at Oriente theater, in Santiago de Cuba, when Sindo was a teenager. On the other hand, in some way or another, he drank from the lied's source: in songs as Germania or Guarina a certain breath of cult songs belonguing to Romantic and Post-Romantic Europeans can be noticed.

Sindo Garay was a popular geny, and the most unbelieveable fact is that the entire Cuban music shaping his work, was learned by him through life, he created it in his head, hands and throat over his guitar. For him, a piece of paper having musical notes was no more than a mysterious hieroglyphic. Only due to his extremely sensibility and skill to synthesize and re-elaborate sound events, he could, despite his ignorance about formal musical techniques, perpetuate his work. Sindo Garay created an excellent heritage for his country and for the world which is still present today in many artists` repertoire and diverse generations of troubadours. Having a real inspiration, he sang to the Cuban landscape, Cuban woman, to major facts of our history... Nothing left in his daily life without be turned on music by him, his life was exceptionally large and intense, full of anecdotes, myths and came to an end on July 17, 1968.

The minstrel who was singing to his country until the age of 89, is remembered all Julies 17, through a congregation of troubadours and friends at his sober pantheon in Bayamo.

There we left new flowers over his grave and in the air is always floating notes of the song that made this city, his land, his people, eternal

By Bachelor Marta Bonet.

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