Other recordings of “La Golondrina”
on 78, according to Second Hand Songs, a database of cover
versions, were made by the Victor Military Band (1914), Bing Crosby
(1928), Xavier Cugat and His Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra (1938), the Boston
"Pops" Orchestra with Arthur Fiedler, Conductor (1938), and Guy Lombardo
and his Royal Canadians (1949).
The Frontera Collection has more
than two dozen recordings of the tune, about half of them issued on 33-pm
discs. Caution: not all entries with the same name are the same song, although
the nostalgia still remains. In a few of cases, the listed song was one
actually written by Ricardo Palmerín and Luis Rosado Vega, and more commonly
called “Golondrinas Yucatecas,” which lyrically portrays
the swallow as a metaphor for lost youth.
In the second half of the 20th
century, as LPs and 45s replaced the 78, “La Golondrina” kept appearing in the
repertoires of artists from myriad genres.
The song of the migrating swallow
soon took flight, finding its way into the American pop mainstream. It was
recorded so frequently by major U.S. artists, either as an instrumental or with
Spanish lyrics, that it became one of those enduring Latin songs considered
American standards in the early to mid-1900s, along with “Quizás, Quizás,
Quizás” (Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps), “Solamente Una Vez” (You Belong to My
Heart), “Malagueña” by Ernesto Lecuona, and “Bésame
Mucho,” which was even recorded by The Beatles in 1962.
Currently, there are 1,000
individual recordings of “La Golondrina” listed on AllMusic, ranging from Mantovani to Caetano
Veloso. The list also includes Spanish-language or instrumental versions by Nat
King Cole, Slim Whitman, Perez Prado, Hank Williams, Gene Autry (The Singing
Cowboy), Percy Faith, and The Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra. Not to mention
other renditions by less mainstream acts, such as Cousin Fuzzy and His Cousins
(1960), The Harmonicats (1962), The Mexicali Brass (1966), and The Nashville
String Band (1969). The latter was a trio featuring Homer and Jethro, along
with guitarist Chet Atkins, who had recorded his own instrumental
version in 1955.
The original song has also been
featured in Hollywood movies, most famously in director Sam Peckinpah’s The
Wild Bunch (1969), sung by a chorus during a farewell scene, of
course. In the sci-fi cult classic Starship
Troopers (1997), the tune is played as
a solo serenade (on a rare green acrylic, 5-string electric violin),
foreshadowing the death of lead character Isabel "Dizzy" Flores.
Many
younger Americans today, whether they know it or not, will recognize the
Mexican tune, even without having heard the Spanish version. That’s true thanks
to a handful of English translations, the most notable being "She Wears My
Ring," written in 1960 by the Nashville songwriting team of Felice &
Boudleaux Bryant ("Bye Bye Love", "Wake Up Little Susie").
It was first recorded that same year by Jimmy Bell, followed by The
Wanderers (1961), Roy
Orbison (1962), Hank Snow (1965), Solomon
King (1968), and Elvis
Presley (1973), among many others.
The English versions, however,
changed the meaning of the lyrics, from nostalgic to romantic, minus the sense
of yearning for home from afar. A different translation with a strong sense of
loss and longing, “We Love But Once,” was recorded in 1960 by pop crooner Pat Boone, with lyrics by Thomas Mac
Gillicuddy and Ray Gilbert.
The translations are not limited to
English and Spanish versions. In 1968, for example, it became a No. 1 hit in
Germany titled “Du sollst nicht weinen” (Thou Shalt Not Cry), for
13-year-old singer Heintje. Two years later,
another child star, 9-year-old Anita Hegerland from Norway, scored a
Scandinavian hit in Swedish called “Mitt sommarlov” (My Summer
Break).
There are so many versions of “La
Golondrina” around the globe that a Serbian blogger named Slobodan Darko has made it his mission to compile
as many as he can find, from any country, in any language. The Belgrade-based
blogger – whose platform In Dreams hosted the aforementioned page on the
song’s history – has been posting his ambitious “La Golondrina” discography since 2011. He’s up
to 1,500 recordings, including versions in Dutch, Korean, Indonesian, Croatian,
Portuguese, English, French, German, and Icelandic. His latest blog entry from
October 6, 2019, features Part 103 of his song compilation,
including a 1929 recording by violinist George Lipschultz, on a 10-inch, 78-rpm
disc (Columbia W147831).
Then again, some songs transcend
language with their emotional vibe.
One blogger quickly picked up on the
Mexican tune’s melancholy meaning, despite the language barrier. He posted his
thoughts at Village Memorial: The Art of Remembrance, a site
designed to help people plan proper tributes for their lost loved ones.
“I
first heard ‘Las Golondrinas’ (sic) sung by Pedro
Infante when I was looking into traditional Mexican music often
played at funerals,” the blogger wrote. “The Mariachi music sounds quite
graceful behind Pedro Infante’s vocals. The song has a warmth and comforting
quality to it. It may be designed to help the bereaved to let go and accept the
loss. Some songs are designed to evoke emotion to help people express their
feelings, and ‘Las Golondrinas’ has that quality.”
The Swallow as Symbol
The
swift swallow, which can be found on every continent, has long been used as a
poetic symbol in several cultures, going back to Roman and Greek mythology. Its
sleek image appears in classical Chinese paintings, in Islamic pilgrimages to
Mecca, and as bad omens in Japan. Some Christians consider them sacred because
they believe swallows removed barbs from Christ’s crown of thorns while on the
cross. And for centuries, sailors revered the shore-hugging swallow as a sign
that long, dangerous journeys had come to an end, making the swallow tattoo an
emblem of hope.
In the U.S., the most widely known
reference to the migratory birds is their annual return to Mission San Juan
Capistrano in Orange County. The storied phenomenon was the title of a hit
song, “When the Swallows Return to Capistrano,”
recorded in 1940 by Dinah Shore with Xavier Cugat and His Waldorf-Astoria
Orchestra. The Frontera archive contains a Spanish version, “Cuando Vuelven Las Golondrinas a Capistrano,” in
a tender rendition by vocalist Marco Rosales, on a Varsity label 78.
Despite such worldwide significance,
it would be hard to match the cultural prevalence of the swallow throughout
Spain and Latin America.
In Mexico, the 19th
century song became so ingrained in popular culture that contemporary composers
refer to it for their own farewell tunes. “Que Me Toquen Las Golondrinas,” by
prolific Mexican songwriter Tomás Méndez, portrays a heart-broken man who begs
a bartender to play the original song because he plans to leave, for no place
in particular but “lejos, muy lejos” (far, far away). Notice the plural form,
“Las Golondrinas,” which in Mexico has come to be used commonly, though
incorrectly, instead of the singular of “the swallow,” as originally written.
In the Frontera database, a search
for any song with the word “golondrina” in its title yields 234 recordings,
from “Agraciada Golondrina” to “Vuelve Golondrina.”
But it’s not just a popular title in
music. La Golondrina is a very common name for Mexican restaurants, starting
with the landmark eatery at Olvera Street, billed as the first Mexican
restaurant in Los Angeles. The ubiquitous bird is also the name of an Airbnb retreat in Cuernavaca, a tapas bar in Sevilla, an old New Mexico rancho
serving as a living history museum near Santa Fe. Add to that a hotel
in Playa del Carmen. An apartment complex in San Jose. The world’s
largest cave shaft (Cave of Swallows) in San Luis Potosí.
A 1968 television movie by famed Spanish director
Juan de Orduña. Several notable waterfalls in the mountains of Colombia,
the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and at the confluence of two rivers
in the Mayan jungles of Chiapas. And finally, there’s a boat tour in Barcelona named Las Golondrinas that
has been operating since 1888, almost as old as its namesake song.
Origin Story: Unraveling Fact from
Fiction
The Internet is replete with websites
that purport to document the origin story of “La Golondrina,” whose music and
lyrics were written separately at different times by different composers. But
the online trail is full of unsubstantiated facts, carelessly repeated over and
over. As with other cultural histories on the web, reality is often ignored in
favor of a good narrative. Let’s see if we can separate the truth from the
myth.
We
know for a fact who wrote the music – a Mexican musician named Narciso
Serradell. But it’s much more difficult to track the true source of the lyrics.
Narciso Serradell Sevilla was born
in Alvarado, Veracruz, on January 25, 1843, to a Catalan father and a Mexican
mother. Restless and adventurous as a boy, he twice fled the seminary, where he
had undertaken religious studies under pressure from his mother, according to
Mexican historian Hugo de Grial.
Eventually, he broke from his family and enrolled in medical school. He took
part-time jobs at night, rolling cigars and performing at dances. But he ran
short of funds and failed to get his degree in medicine.
In 1862, when he was only 19,
Serradell joined the ragtag Mexican army assembled to stop the invading French
forces. Although Mexico won a temporary victory at the Battle of Puebla on
Cinco de Mayo, Serradell was taken prisoner and exiled to France.
From that point, it’s much more
difficult to say with certainty how words and music came together to create “La
Golondrina” as we know it. A certain creation mythology can be gleaned from
several websites.
The original text, as the prevailing
story goes, was allegedly written in Arabic by the 16th century
Moorish king Abén Humeya (c. 1545-1569),
who led a revolt against the Catholic monarchs of Spain. Humeya, whose
Christian name was Fernando de Válor y Córdoba, was an actual historic figure,
born in Granada with a noble Islamic lineage traced directly to the prophet
Muhammad. But Humeya was considered a Morisco, the group of former Muslims who
had undergone forced conversion to Christianity following the fall of Granada,
the last Moorish stronghold re-captured by the Catholic monarchy in 1492.
History tells us that Humeya was
radicalized by the monarchy’s subsequent crackdown on Islamic culture,
outlawing their language, traditional clothing, public baths, and any traces of
Islamic religious practices. Moriscos saw it as a betrayal of previous
reassurances that their traditions would be protected. So Humeya adopted his
Arabic name, Muhammad ibn Umayya, was elected king of Granada, and spearheaded
the uprising known as the Morisco Revolt, or the War of the Alpujarras,
1568–71.
In the end, the Spanish Crown was victorious and the Moriscos were dispersed,
exiled, or enslaved. This is the tragic moment which is said to have inspired
the original poem that would evolve into “La Golondrina.” Humeya, supposedly,
wrote the original longing lyrics on the ship taking him into exile, as he watched
the coast of his beloved homeland disappear in the distance.
There’s just one problem: The Morisco leader was killed two years before the
uprising ended. Depending on the source, Abén Humeya was either felled in battle by an arrow to the chest, strangled
to death in a coup engineered by the Turks, or hanged by his own men in his palace in the town
of Láujar de Andarax.
In any event, he could not have been on that ship, mournfully writing those
nostalgic lyrics as he sailed into exile. Humeya is often described as a brute
and a philanderer who kidnapped women to take as wives and concubines. But
nowhere is he described as a man of letters.
That description, however, does apply to Francisco de Paula Martínez de la Rosa
(1787-1862), a Spanish diplomat, politician, philosophy professor, dramatist,
and poet who led a privileged but tumultuous life during the revolutionary
Spain of the early 1800s. It was Martínez de la Rosa who provided the link
between the medieval Moors and modern Mexicans, but not in the way armchair
historians would have us believe.
In 2011, a Spanish blogger wrote authoritatively that
Humeya’s lost text was unearthed centuries later by an unnamed French
investigator in Marrakesh, the exotic, ancient city in Morocco. It went through
various translations, one of which was published in a French magazine that was
then used as packing material by an unidentified traveler on an unspecified
journey. That version of the poem subsequently, somehow, found its way into the
hands of Serradell, who added the music.
“¿Curiosa historia, verdad?” asks the blogger, Manuel Medina.
Yes, very curious story indeed. Too bad it’s probably not true. Unfortunately,
these fanciful tales about the song’s meandering history are passed on as
gospel, and translated to other languages, as if in a multilingual echo
chamber. The same unlikely story is repeated in English on websites such as Wikipedia
and Revolvy.
What is true is that Martínez de la Rosa was exiled to Paris in 1823, as a
result of his involvement in Spain’s political unrest. There, he was swept up
by the French Romantic Movement in literature, led by Victor Hugo, Alexandre
Dumas, François-René de Chateaubriand, and others. The Spaniard, who was born
in Granada, was so impressed by his French colleagues that he decided to write
a play in that style, and do it in French.
Abén Humeya, ou la révolte des
Maures sous Philippe II debuted in
Paris on July 30, 1830, at the historic Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin. In a
preface to an edition published that same year, available on the web at Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, the
author explains that he wrote the play in French, then translated it himself to
Spanish (Abén Humeya, ó la Rebelión de los Moriscos), although some scholars claim the language order was the
other way around. Be that as it may, the work today is considered the first
historical drama in Spanish.
Reading the text of the play appears
to solve the mystery surrounding the source of what would become the famous
song. At the top of Act II, Martínez de la Rosa includes a poem he calls a
“Romance Morisco,” which is being sung on stage as his lead character, Abén
Humeya, lounges on pillows and listens. The song tells the sad story of an
exiled Morisco who laments leaving Granada and never seeing his homeland again.
Al
dejar Aben Hamet
por
siempre a su amada patria,
a
cada paso que da
el
rostro vuelve y se para;
mas
al perderla de vista,
las
lágrimas se le saltan;
y
en estos tristes acentos
despídese
de Granada:
«A
Dios, hermoso vergel,
tierra
del cielo envidiada,
donde
por dicha nací,
donde
morir esperaba;
de
tu seno y de mi hogar
mi
dura estrella me arranca;
y
me condena a vivir
y
a morir en tierra extraña.
Obviously, this verse is far from
the actual lyrics of “La Golondrina.” But it does contain elements found later
in the popular song – nostalgia, sentimentalism, melancholy, and the yearning
for a lost homeland.
This poetic theme eventually evolved into the Spanish verse that was put to
music by Serradell, who also lived in exile in Paris during roughly the same
period. Some say that the poem went through several iterations and translations
until arriving at the famous final version by Basque poet, playwright, and
historian Juan Niceto Zamacois Urrutia (1820-1885), who emigrated to México as
a young man. Authoritative sources, as well as record labels,
now generally credit Zamacois as the lyricist.
Juan Niceto Zamacois Urrutia (1820-1885)
In any case, “La Golondrina” makes
no reference to Abén Humeya and the Moors, nor any specific person or country.
What is left is simply the pure longing felt by someone far from home. Plus, an
intriguing puzzle hidden within Zamacois’ verses.
In Spanish, the lyrics of “La
Golondrina” constitute an acrostic poem. That is, the first letter of each line
spells out a romantic hidden message: “Al Objeto De Mi Amor” (To the Object of
my Love).
A
dónde irá, veloz y fatigada,
La golondrina que de aquí se va?
Oh, si en el viento se hallara extraviada
Buscando abrigo sin poderlo hallar!
Junto a mi lecho le pondré su nido
En donde pueda la estación pasar.
También yo estoy en la región perdido,
Oh, cielo santo!, y sin poder volar.
Dejé también mi patria idolatrada,
Esa mansión que me miró nacer.
Mi vida es hoy errante y angustiada
Y ya no puedo a mi mansión volver.
Ave querida, amada peregrina,
Mi corazón al tuyo acercaré,
Oiré tu canto, tierna golondrina,
Recordaré mi patria y lloraré.
VICENTE FERRI e MARGARETH MAKIOLKE 
Tiziana Rivale 
Sonneville Family Band
Silvia Andreu Muñoz 
Rosy Singers 
Philharmonia Orchestra Of Hamburg 
Martin Berger 
Marimba Orquesta Union Ideal 
Mariachi Los Alazanes 
Hyuk Young Choi 
ELEMAR BENCKE 
Charles Margulis
Banda Sinfónica Sagrado Corazón de Jesús
(unknown) 
