The History of Lamento Borincano
Latin Beat Magazine
Oct, 1999
Author: Frank M. Figueroa
Ever since the caveman, man has sought relief from pain and sorrow through cries and lamentations. Experience has taught him that verbalizing the aches of the body and soul is an efficient way to find consolation and ease the pain. This strategy is used by members of every culture in the world. They give voice to their suffering in very distinct ways such as cries, moans, wails, and lamentations. The ancient Hebrews institutionalized wailing in the Lamentations in the Book of Jeremiah of the Old Testament. Modern Jews have preserved the tradition by gathering weekly at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem for prayer and lamentation. African cultures have traditionally unburdened themselves of pain and grief through individual and community singing. Orientals have also devised an elaborate system of wails and laments. This custom worked its way to the West and reached Spain through the Moors. Today we can hear it in flamenco singing. In the New World as well, moaning and wailing is a common practice among the indigenous people. In 17th century Europe, they were an important part of Italian opera. Spanish composers also made use of the lament tone in their compositions.
Latin American writers of popular songs, drawing upon their mixed cultural heritage, further developed this music form. There was no shortage of sorrow and sadness among the population groups in America. The Spaniards longed for their Iberian home. The Africans endured slavery, separation from their native land, and later, oppression and discrimination when they became free. The Indians were driven from their land, enslaved and generally brutalized. Once the Spaniards were forced to leave, many countries in Latin America became colonies of the United States and the native citizenry continued to suffer. Facing this reality, the composers of "lamentos" provided people the opportunity to vent their frustrations and pain through singing or crying. The Spanish expression llori-cantar (to sob and sing) perhaps best describes this mixed reaction.
The lamentos have been called the protest songs of their time, but they lacked the anger and demanding tone of today's protest songs. They were truly lamentations directed at God or to any sympathetic ear. In many cases, the composers were not members of the oppressed groups and their message was more conformist than rebellious. Among the best known lamentos are Lamento Africano, Lamento Bohemio, Lamento Borincano, Lamento Campesino, Lamento Cubano, Lamento Español, Lamento Gitano, and Lamento Jarocho.
Perhaps the best known of all lamentos is the Lamento Borincano written by Puerto Rican composer Rafael Hernández. He was born in 1891 to a poor, black family in the coastal town of Aguadilla. As a child, he witnessed the occupation of Puerto Rico by the U.S. Army.
In the years that followed, Rafael endured the miserable economic conditions forced upon his homeland by its status as a colony. The island's economy was strictly dependant on sugarcane production anti the sugar industry was almost totally in the hands of foreign investors. Thousands of sugarcane cutters worked the field for fifty cents a day. There was no running water or electricity in most of the rural areas. Trying to escape those conditions, the jíbaros sold their land for anything they could get and moved into the city slums of San Juan, Ponce, and Mayagüez. Life in the cities proved to be even more pathetic for them. Employment opportunities were scarce or nonexistent. They could no longer depend on homegrown products for food, and under nourishment made them victims of tuberculosis and anemia, the scourges of the time. Rafael Hernández internalized the woeful plight of his people and expressed their sorrow in songs such as Lamento Borincano.
Puerto Ricans were granted U.S. citizenship in 1917, making possible migration to cities on the mainland such as New York. Those who could afford the price of a steamship ticket reluctantly left their island paradise for the uncertainty of life in a foreign land. Among the expatriates were several musicians and composers such as Pedro Flores and Rafael Hernández. They are responsible for some of the most patriotic and inspirational songs in Puerto Rican music. Flores and Hernández wrote under conditions of exile and this intensified their passion for their country.
In 1929, Rafael Hernández wrote his Lamento Borincano while living in New York City. There are several versions of where he wrote the song. It is clearly established that he wrote it in Spanish Harlem, but the exact place is under question. Latin music historian Max Salazar claims that Rafael's sister, Victoria, told him that the composer wrote the tune on the sidewalk in front of the Hernández Music Store in the Spanish Barrio. In an article published in Latin Beat, Salazar wrote as follows:
}...In a room at the back of the store there was a piano that was utilized to teach students. One summer day in 1929, Victoria urged Rafael to leave the room so she could instruct a student. Rafael took his guitar and a tin can of black coffee out onto the sidewalk, sat down near the edge of the curb, feet in the gutter, turned his guitar and began to sing and write lyrics on a piece of paper...~
In a publication by the Fundación Recordando a Rafael Hernández Compositor (1989) an unidentified writer quotes Rafael as saying:
}It happened on one of those days in which you're broke and its raining a lot outside. One of our friends had a bottle of Puerto Rican rum. As we were passing the bottle, the memories of our little island rushed in and our minds flew to the sunny beaches of the faraway homeland. The palm trees and all the beautiful things over there appeared to us as visions of Paradise. The nostalgia of that cold, sad, and melancholy afternoon drew my fingers to the dilapidated piano in a corner of the room and I began to play the melody of Lamento Borincano. It emerged spontaneously.~
Other music historians say that the song was written in a restaurant in East Harlem. The real truth is that Rafael probably worked on the song in several places. The initial inspiration may have come in one place, he further developed the melody in the back room of his sister's music store, and worked on the lyrics in other locations. Latin music collector and historian Jaime Jaramillo supports this assumption in his account of an interview with singer Davilita. Lamento Borincano which depicts the harsh life of the Puerto Rican peasant, had been composed by Hernández, and one day when he was practicing the song in his music store, Davilita, who used to visit the store almost daily to sit alongside Hernández at the piano to sing Hernández songs, came by and sat as usual at the piano to sing the famous song.
Although Hernández had been recording since 1925 with his Trio Borinquen for the Columbia label, he had never recorded this song because it was too "hillbilly." Davilita liked the song and asked Hernández to record it, but he refused and told him that the song was unfinished. A few days later, Canario came by and liked the song also and practically took it away from Hernández's hands. According to a conversation that Canario had with his musical collector friend Ovidio Davila, he mentioned that after he took the papers with the lyrics, Hernández ran after him claiming that the song was unfinished and, in a corner of New York, he tried to complete the lyrics. The song was recorded by Canario and proved to be a success despite the fact that the song was incomplete. Hernández eventually finished the lyrics. The missing part mentions "Y alegre también su yegua va..." or "merrily the mare trots along..." That was included later, after the first recording. Canario's persistence earned him the distinction of being the first to record Lamento Borincano. Fate, however, would give Davilita the opportunity to also participate in that recording. On July 14, 1930, the day of the recording, the first voice, Ramón Quirós, had a throat ailment and could not sing because the day before they had been at Coney Island Beach drinking and having too great a time. Canario asked Davilita to sing first voice and since he already knew the song, he nervously stepped in and with his thin voice sang it accompanied by the legendary Fausto Delgado.
In the lyrics of Lamento Borincano, Rafael Hernández recalls the Puerto Rico he knew as a child. He delineates the jibarito, symbol of the Puerto Rican people, surrounded by the beauty of that tropical island. He presents him to us descending from his Garden of Eden in the hills of Puerto Rico on his mare loaded with the products of his small farm. The jibarito is full of optimism and looks forward to selling his wares in the public market. He is totally unsuspecting of what he will find once he reaches the tragic realism of the city. Unable to sell his produce, the jibarito heads back home frustrated and despondent.
The composer himself refers to this bittersweet song as "a joyous hymn" when the jibarito sets out on his journey of hope and a sad lamento on his return. Rafael Hernández was a master storyteller and in his Lamento Borincano he summarizes the pathetic situation of the poor people in Puerto Rico in the 1930s. Here is what he wrote:
Sale loco de contento,
He leaves full of joy
con su cargamento
with his load of produce
para la ciudad, !ay!
destined for the city,
para la ciudad.
for the city.
Lleva en su pensamiento
His mind is full with
todo un mundo lleno
images of a world
de felicidad, !ay!
replete with happiness,
de felicidad.
much happiness.
The song begins with a hopeful tone. It is a brand new day and the jibarito is full of the country folk's traditional optimism. He even envisions what he will do with the money from his sales. In all this anticipated joy there is a foreboding note expressed by the lamentation ¡ay! The next few verses were added by Hernández after Canario almost forcibly took the song from the composer.
Y alegre también su yegua va
His mare trots along merrily
al presentir que aquel cantar
sensing that his song
es toda un himno de alegría.
is a total hymn of joy.
Y en eso le sorprende
Just about then daylight
la luz del día,
overtakes them and they arrive
y llegan al mercado
at the city's market.
de la ciudad.
Apparently Rafael felt it was important to show that even nature shared the happiness and optimism of the moment. These verses also heighten the dramatic impact of the next few scenes. As if in a theater, night's dark curtain rises and the jibarito's eyes are soon filled with the stark vista of the city market.
pasa la mañana entera
The entire morning goes by
sin que nadie pueda
and no one can afford
su carga comprar, ¡ay!
to buy his produce.
su carga comprar.
Todo, todo está desierto
There's nothing but desolation.
el pueblo está muerto
and the people are dying from
de necesidad, ¡ay!
starvation.
de necesidad.
Stunned by the full impact of the harsh reality, the jibarito resigns himself to the fact that his homeland and his way of life are in peril. His only salvation is to return to the hills and live in communion with nature until the calamity subsides.
Se oye este lamento
This lament can be heard
por doquier
en mi desdichada Borinquen, sí.
throughout my unfortunate Boriquen.
Y triste, el jibarito va
And sad and forlorn
llorando así, diciendo así,
the jibarito treks along the path
pensando así, por el camino.
crying like tis, saying like this,
"Qué será de Borinquen,
thinking like this on his way,
mi Dios querido,
"What will become of Borinquen,
qué será de mis hijos
my dear God? What will happen to
y de mi hogar.
my children and my home?
The song now turns into a lamento heard everywhere in Borinquen. The entire population is suffering the effects of the economic depression. In this composition, Rafael Hernández never uses the name Puerto Rico to refer to his home-land. He chooses Borinquen instead, the ancestral name of the island. This term is symbolic of the mother country for Puerto Ricans.
The jibarito, like the legendary Don Quijote, now realizes that he is facing an unbeatable foe. Nothing but Divine Intervention can save his beloved Borinquen. He directs his lamento to the Almighty in an appeal for help to save his country, his children, and his home. In his heart, he vows just like the Cervantes character, to fight with his last ounce of courage to overcome adversity.
Borinquen,
Borinquen,
la tierra del Edén
the Garden of Eden.
la que al cantar el gran Gautier
The land that the great Gautier
llamó la Perla de los Mares.
called the Pearl of the Seas.
Ahora que tú te mueres
Now that you are
con tus pesares.
drowning in your sorrows,
Déjame que te cante yo también.
allow me to sing to you
Yo también...
as well...
In the last verses, Hernández joins another great Puerto Rican, Manuel Gautier Benítez, who raised his voice in defense of the island and extolled its beauty. The Lamento Borincano became an instant hit among Puerto Ricans at home and those living abroad. Although it specifically depicted the miserable conditions of the poor and peasant class of the island, all Puerto Ricans adopted it as a patriotic hymn. In time, many campesinos in Latin America adopted the song as well. They could identify with the jibarito's problems and found comfort in singing the lamento.
Today, seventy years after it was written, Lamento Borincano is still relevant. When Rafael Hernández was asked why his song had remained popular and is timeless, he said: }Unless there is a better opinion, I believe that my Lamento Borincano still continues to press on the sensibility of the great Latin American public, notwithstanding the changes in musical taste that have occurred. I think that is due principally, if not exclusively, to the fact that the song expressed in its time, better than any other song, a social reality that far from being a "thing of the past" is still prevalent in most of the countries of the long-suffering subcontinent. The tragedy of the Puerto Rican jibarito, who was the victim of material misery and spiritual anxiety in the 1930s, today continues to be the tragedy of the Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Bolivian, Paraguayan and Ecuadorian campesinos. In Puerto Rico, let me say it clearly in order to avoid misunderstandings, misery has put on a cloak of opulence and spiritual anxiety is stifled under indifference. In spite of that, no Puerto Rican, no matter how misguided or irresponsible he may be, can avoid feeling the weight of those concerns on his shoulders.~
Dozens of artists have recorded the Lamento Borincano. You should be able to find one that suits your particular taste in the list below:
1. Xiomara Alfaro-BMG/Tropical CD-3471
2. Don Azpiazi Orq.-Harlequin CD-10
3. Banco Popular Special (1965)-BPLP-65
4. Banco Popular Special (1995)-BP CD-231
5. Banco Popular Special (1997)-BP CD-4
6. Banco Popular Special (1998)-BP CD-98
7. Canario y su Grupo-RCA (78) Vi 30008, Harlequin CD-359
8. Canario y su Grupo-Brunswick (78) B4-41479
9. Davilita-Harlequin CD-359
10. Plácido Domingo-Capitol CD-55163 371
11. Indios Trabajaras RCA FSP-310
12. Don José Havana Orq.-RCA (78) Vi 30735
13. Los Panchos-Caytronics LP-CYS-1016
14. Leo Marini-Tropical TRLP-5096
15. Noro Morales-Tumbao CD-036
16. Marcos A. Muñiz-BMG-INT CD-8357-2-RL9
17. Alfonso Ortiz Tirado-RCA LPV-1072
18. Puerto Rico Jazz Jam-AJ CD-169
19. Tito Rodríguez-TR CD-TTH TR-500
20. David Sánchez-Sony CD-69116
21. Gilberto Santa Rosa-Polydor CD-529282
22. Joe Valle-Seeco CD-9146
23. Los Violines de Pego-Kubaney LP-408
