Saumell’s contradanzas invent Cubanness

1850-01-01 · 1850

From the late 1830s until he died in 1870, Manuel Saumell wrote more than fifty contradanzas — short Cuban piano dances. They were the first concert pieces that sounded clearly Cuban. In 1839 he also planned an opera set in old Havana; he never finished it. The dances did the work. “Hence, Saumell is not only the father of the contradanza, as it has been called. He is the father of the habanera (the prima of “La amistad”), the danzón (“La Tedezco”), the guajira (the segunda of “La Matilde”), the clave (“La Celestina”), the criolla (the segunda of “La Nené”), and of certain modalities of the Cuban song (the segunda of “Recuerdos tristes”).” “The idea of nationalism had been born.” — Alejo Carpentier, Cuban novelist and music historian, Music in Cuba, trans. Alan West-Durán, ed. Timothy Brennan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), pp. 192–193.

Genres: Contradanza, Habanera, Música clásica