Cuban Attache
Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.
—Andrew Fletcher, 1703.
In the politically violent land of Cuba there is often some doubt as towho, exactly, is writing the laws. But there is never any doubt as towho is the chief songwriter in that melodious land. He is ErnestoLecuona. He wrote the famed, romantic air which outsiders couldscarcely be blamed for supposing was the Cuban NationalAnthem—Siboney.* He wrote Canto Karabali , Andalucia, La Comparsa, Say Si Si, Maria La O, and a host ofother numbers which have made Cuban melody world-famed.
Last week, armed with the title of Cultural Attaché of the CubanEmbassy, solid, swarthy Ernesto Lecuona was rushing around Manhattandoing a number of things no diplomat had ever done before. He had justsigned one of the biggest song-publishing contracts ever negotiated onBroadway. He had agreed to collaborate with U.S. Songwriter VincentYoumans on 15 numbers for a new musical show. He wascombing Hollywood agents out of his vaselined hair. He had gatheredtogether an orchestra of some 60 pieces and turned Carnegie Hall into acave of Caribbean melody.
Even in the U.S. Lecuona's tunes outsell those of many a top-flight TinPan Alleyite . They also stay in the top sales brackets longer than mostTin Pan Alley songs .
Boy Bandsman. But Ernesto Lecuona's biggest popularity lies south, ofthe Tropic of Cancer. There his eminence is fabulous. Cuba has twoother top-rank songwriters: Moises Simons andEliseo Grenet . But Lecuona's 300-odd songs and pianopieces, to which Latin Americans have been listening for more than twodecades, have become as indelible a part of their culture as theSpanish and Portuguese tongues. Several years ago, while Lecuona wassafely on his plantation near Havana, a businessman named RicardoLecuona was killed in a plane crash in Colombia. While news flashesmistakenly identified the dead man as Ernesto, radio stations inMexico, Peru, Chile, Brazil and Argentina went off the air for periodsof silence in his honor.
Unlike most popular songwriters, 47-year-old Lecuona is also a virtuosoconcert pianist and a composer of symphonic music. Son of a Havananewspaperman, he began composing at the age of eleven with a two-stepcalled Cuba Y America. Cuban military bands still play it. A boyhoodstar at Havana's National Conservatory under Composer Joaquin Nin,Lecuona organized his own band and appeared in Havana's movie houses inlong trousers borrowed from an older friend. At 21 he traveled to theU.S. and made player-piano rolls of his early hits.
Lecuona was among the first to introduce rumba music to the U.S.public—in 1922 at Broadway's Capitol Theatre. Later he went to Paris,where he hobnobbed with the late Maurice Ravel and continued studyingthe piano. Then he toured Europe, Central and South America as aconcert pianist. He has since made equally wide but more informal tourswith a rumba outfit called Lecuona's Cuban Boys, has also written 30musical comedies, most of them in collaboration with Cuban LibrettistGustavo Galarraga.
Bachelor of Music. Ernesto Lecuona is a quiet citizen who likes to wearfine clothes—in which, however, he looks like Comedian Zero Mostel. Hesays he dislikes nightclubs, but he makes the Manhattan rounds withsystematic regularity. He also visits churches and museums. Theseldom-visited place he calls home is a finca about 40 minutesoutside Havana where he has a nine-room house surrounded with tropicalfruit trees, ten dogs and a large assortment of hogs, cattle andhorses.
Lecuona is a bachelor but a Latin. Asked last week what he saw in theU.S. that he would like to take home, he replied pensively: "I'd liketo collect American women—they are the most beautiful in theworld—I'd like to make a harem of them."
*The Cuban anthem is a march by Pedro Figueredo. Siboney is alove song about a hypothetical Indian girl of the Siboneyes, a tribethat inhabited Cuba at the time of the Spanish conquest.
Next:The Sick and the Heartsick
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