THE first signs of the genre arrived with the old trova musicians. Just that now life has transformed their clothes in line with the times. From the second half of the 19th century it has been a kind of preparing the ground for emotions. Magical and unpredictable, it is currently moving along many and dynamic paths.

The 20th edition of the International Boleros de Oro Festival, which toured the island from June 15 to July 2 with representatives from 10 countries, evoked the contribution made by the Santiago trova musician Pepe Sánchez when he published Tristezas (Sorrows) in 1883, an anthological work that defines the stylistic characteristics of one of the emblematic rhythms of popular music.

In its fruitful movement throughout the Caribbean and the rest of Latin America, the bolero has been mixed with distinct rhythms that have influenced its gradual evolution, resound in the soul and invite one to dance.

Different composers, bolero artists and public consider the Cuban festival a venue for essential reencounters. It is not by chance that Santiago de Cuba was one of the main sub-venues. Five significant composers for guitar from that region: Sindo Garay, Manuel Corona, Alberto Villalón, Rosendo Ruiz and Patricio Ballagas, founded the bases for the genre with distinct styles. Between ups and downs, the musical happening has revived itself with new textual, melodic and harmonic concepts.

Hence and together with his working team, the composer Rodulfo Vaillant, president of that eastern province’s Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), an organization that has sponsored the event throughout its 45 years of existence, highlighted during the Festival the gift of ubiquity for the bolero in large theaters, small towns and communities.

Sacred and youthful figures from Havana and Santiago participated in the grand fiesta. While many composers and interpreters remain faithful to the guitar – a recurrent instrument in the "filin" (feeling) style influenced by jazz in song and in the Cuban bolero, there is a marked intent to enrich the sound and rhythmical universes with innovative, contemporary arrangements, essential for making the genre approachable to youth. In that undertaking the singers Coco Freeman and Ernesto Roel have attained a special profile.

The Festival, that has echoes throughout the country, demonstrated the worth of many musicians and singers who are sustaining the bolero’s renovation. In this context the maestro Joaquín Betancourt, composer and arranger, and Zunilda Remigio, unique in her interpretation given her phrasing and rhythm, both stand out with the CD Es que soy yo (That’s What I Am), recorded on the EGREM label in tribute to Elena Burke, the deceased and emblematic figure of Cuban song.

During the concerts and shows that animated the principal theaters of the countries, eminent voices, including Omara Portuondo, Xiomara Valdés, Farah María, Zulema Iglesias, Yoel Leyva and Emilia Morales excelled in their communicativeness, elegance and stage projection.

Currently the bolero tradition is neither an old one nor lazy, as confirmed by the theoretic event in Havana’s Latin American Cultural Center in which researchers, musicologists and journalists reflected on the complexities of a rhythm that possesses a rich and evocative biography.