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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780252041907 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Illinois Press |
| Publication date: | 06/13/2018 |
| Series: | Music in American Life |
| Pages: | 376 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
FROM MÁLAGA'S MOUNTAINS
Standing alone on the mountainside, I quietly contemplate a lulling sensory counterpoint. Soon a favorite line from Clemens Brentano's poetry begins to echo in my consciousness, becoming a sort of mantra in this moment: "Silence, silence, let us listen intently!" All about me, bees hum in a unison drone while wood-pecking carpintero birds hammer out insistent rhythms on bark drums; a steady breeze stirs pine needles into undulations yielding both scent and sound; shimmering white clouds traverse the azure savannah overhead with a majestic gait, andante maestoso; great crescendos of warm North African air, laced with the vivifying fragrance and moisture of the Mediterranean, engulf the verdant earth; sea and sky blend seamlessly into a monochromatic canvas of blue, articulated in staccato fashion by brown, haze-shrouded islets off the Andalusian coast.
A hundred meters or so away, a chaotic chorus of bleating heralds the arrival of a herd of goats gamboling up the slopes of a dry wash and then threading its way through the local luxuriance of palo, pepper, pine, and palm trees, scrub oak, aloe, cactus, chaparral, wild grasses, yucca, oleander, as well as pomegranate, eucalyptus, mulberry, and olive trees. Here and there about me grow delicately fulsome rosemary plants, shyly adorned with pale-blue blossoms. Their celestial hue has made rosemary a popular emblem of religious devotees over the centuries, and the plant's Spanish name has thus become the same as that for a pilgrim, romero, or a pilgrimage, romería. I pluck a tender shoot to savor its pungent perfume.
Yet despite this Edenic nirvana, my mind wanders again and again to the place whence I have come this day and commands my eyes to trace the long, tortuous road that runs like a serpentine scar across the face of the mountain, to trace it down and away to the distant seaport of Málaga. Málaga, with its Roman amphitheater, its Moorish fortress, its cavernous cathedral, its tree-lined boulevards, and its timeless flamenco songs. Málaga, birthplace of Pablo Picasso and the twentieth-century surrealist poet and Nobel laureate Vicente Aleixandre, who dubbed it the "City of Paradise." But my restless thoughts remain unsatisfied with Málaga's paradisial enchantments and set sail ever farther, plus ultra, through the Pillars of Hercules and across the Atlantic to the margent of another world, to another ocean, other cities to discover, and other mountains to ascend.
This poetic scenario is both the beginning and the end of our saga. It is the saga itself, as we shall see. My companions on this outing include Pepe and Celin Romero, who are visiting their ancestral ground for the first time. Clambering over the tumbledown remains of a church that once formed the nucleus of a small farming village called Jotrón, they marvel at this place, hallowed by the memory of an earlier generation of Romeros and the first Spanish locale ever inhabited by their father, Celedonio. Spanish poet Antonio Machado seemed almost to have been speaking to them when, over a century earlier, he wrote, "Muy cerca está, romero, la tierra verde y santa y florecida de tus sueños" (Very close, pilgrim, is the green, sacred, and flowering land of your dreams). Indeed, it was from these extremely humble beginnings that their family's against-all-odds ascent to global fame (and relative fortune) began. Here it was that romero first became Romero.
Yet we would not even have known of this place without the remarkable memoirs of José Romero (henceforth Uncle Pepe, to distinguish him from Celedonio's renowned son, Pepe Romero), Celedonio's eldest brother, who recalled in photographic detail the early history of his family. The following account of Celedonio's ancestry and early life is greatly indebted to Uncle Pepe's recollections, which he expressed in lapidary Spanish prose. Indeed, a flair for language is just one of many talents that have characterized several generations of Romeros, as his grandson, José Francisco Romero, is a published poet.
MALAK
There are actually two Málagas: the city itself and the province of which it is the capital. Phoenicians colonized the area around the harbor already in the eighth century BCE and named it after their goddess of beauty, Malak. This commercially and militarily strategic locale changed hands over the ensuing centuries, yielding to Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Visigoths, Moors, and Arabs, in addition to welcoming many other groups of people, including Jews and Roma, as well as French and Italian settlers. Christian malagueños enthusiastically embraced the Blessed Virgin Mary, making the Virgen de la Victoria their patron saint, in honor of her undoubted succor in liberating the city from Muslim rule in 1487. But the city itself retained the name of that previous goddess, one whose images and places of worship had long since fallen to pieces. The entire region around the port city adopted this name as well and became one of fifty provinces in modern Spain.
Although Málaga's initial attraction was as a trading center along the southern coast of the Iberian Peninsula, conveniently situated near the Strait of Gibraltar and the North African coast, the historic mainstay of the region's economy has been fishing and agriculture, especially the cultivation of grains, grapes, citrus, and olives. The mountainsides to the north of the city and throughout the province have yielded a cornucopia of profitable produce ever since those ancient times, and certainly in the 1800s, when our story begins.
Yet the City of Paradise has not always been as hospitable as it might seem to the casual observer today. It has proven lamentably prone to floods, droughts, earthquakes, epidemics of plague, cholera, and typhus, as well as to naval and aerial bombardments, invasions, and economic ups and downs. It has experienced its fair share of political upheaval, too. Miserable conditions for workers prompted the rise of unionism and socialism in the 1880s and 1890s, and this laid the groundwork for continued unrest in the 1900s, especially leading up to the civil war of 1936–39, as communists and anarchists joined the fray.
Historically, illiteracy was a major problem throughout Spain, particularly Andalusia. In 1910 illiteracy in Málaga stood at 80 percent of the population, compared to a national rate of 60 percent (today 98.1 percent of Spaniards are literate). Upward mobility was thus difficult, and someone born into a lower caste was likely — though not destined — to remain there, as were his or her offspring. This problem seemed resistant to the municipal government's attempts to establish schools and to educate children. And life in the provincial countryside was even harder than in the capital city.
DE LOS MONTES
Celedonio Romero's maternal great-great-grandparents were prosperous landowners who were born and settled near Jotrón in the northern montes. They owned a beautiful house and much property, which produced an abundance of fruit, grains, and vegetables of various kinds, depending on the amount of rain the usually fertile soil received. They grew enough to sustain themselves and sold any surplus in Málaga. The rugged, stony pathways into town could hardly be called roads, as they were steep, narrow, winding, and infested with bandits. The family's goods were transported on mules or donkeys and guarded by men hired to protect them, called escopeteros, whose mission it was to repulse the daring bandoleros! They always traveled on Saturdays so that their harvest would be in markets for the beginning of the week.
When these distant ancestors died, they left behind a fortune, but it was siphoned off by others, and Celedonio's maternal great-grandparents never saw a centavo of it. Thus they were reduced to working the land their family once owned. Little else is known about them or about the paternal lineage during this time except for an uncle of Celedonio's grandfather who was a day laborer in Totalán, a small village on another mountainside north of the city. This charming locale boasts the lovely sixteenth-century Iglesia de Santa Ana and is replete with the squat, whitewashed dwellings and their old red-tile roofs so characteristic of the region. It makes a pleasant destination for a day outing. But in the 1800s, it was a place one could readily weary of as a jornalero, or field hand. This anonymous uncle tired of backbreaking labor that was poorly paid, in a place that was scorching hot in the summer and bitter cold in the winter. So he moved to Málaga in search of work and education; like the majority of Spaniards at that time, he was illiterate. With the assistance of a generous patron, though, he found lodging, employment, and was enrolled in a school. He completed his education in only two years and set his sights on becoming an engineer of canals, ports, and roads, which required moving to Madrid.
Once in the Spanish capital, he worked during the day and studied in the evening. He proudly reported the following in a letter to his parents: "The rich kids showed up in their finery and elegant coaches, while I was in my dusty shoes. Everyone thought I was a goner. But I got the highest score on the exam!" He went on to occupy the position of superintendent in the Ministry of Public Works and began writing poetry in his spare time. We may never learn his name, but the pattern of his life runs like a thread through the Romero family history, an example of superior intelligence, self-application, and boundless ambition, as well as a knack for understanding how mechanical things work. The United States would one day beckon a group of smart, diligent, and supremely ambitious Romeros and give them ample opportunity to realize their dreams, an opportunity that Spain has throughout its history often been unable to offer some of its most talented sons and daughters, resulting in recurrent brain drain.
After this frustrating anonymity, it's refreshing to start encountering actual names in these memoirs (see the genealogical chart in appendix 2). Celedonio's paternal grandfather was José Romero Falcón, a man of short stature, though strong and clever, who was also born in Totalán and worked as a day laborer there. He, too, eventually tired of Totalán and removed to another mountainside agricultural settlement, Moclinejo, which was somewhat larger and more prosperous. Here it was that he met and married María López González, by whom he had four children: José, María, Enriqueta, and Antonio.
It is now that we encounter for the first time the bewildering family penchant for recycling names from one generation to the next, giving rise to a small army of men named José (or Pepe, the nickname for José) and women named Josefa. Celedonio's maternal grandparents were José Pinazo Gutiérrez and Josefa Gutiérrez Ternero, who were born in the vicinity of Jotrón, where they worked in the fields. They lived in a house they inherited from their great-great-grandparents, and in their skillful care, the land yielded olives, grains, legumes, almonds, and grapevines, which gave them oil, bread, and wine to eat throughout the year and which they could sell in Málaga. The maternal grandfather was of slight stature and not very strong, but he was nonetheless nice looking and somewhat rustic. His wife was tall, strong, and attractive, though not especially clever. Together they had four offspring: Josefa, Dolores, Rafael, and Isabel.
On the paternal side, the oldest of Celedonio's grandparents' children was José Romero López, who was born in Moclinejo on April 15, 1866. He worked as a jornalero there but grew weary of arduous stoop labor and in 1880 made his way to Málaga, where he became an apprentice in the construction trade and demonstrated real talent for that work, though he was only fourteen years old. (He thus followed the same general course as the anonymous tío-abuelo mentioned above.) He was short like his father but with a darker complexion and uncommon intelligence.
While working on a convent for monks, Las Morillas, in Málaga's Camino de Casabermeja, he noticed a fetching young woman pass by one day and fell in love with her at first sight. He made inquiries and learned that she was from the Jotrón area and was spending a few days with some friends in a house near the convent. He made every effort to find and court her. In fact, she was Josefa Pinazo Gutiérrez and was born in Jotrón on August 28, 1871, making her five years younger than José. They became steadies, or novios, though she had to return for a time to Jotrón. But they stayed in touch. After finishing work on the convent, he was offered a job as a foreman at Noirot and Company, a responsible position that involved maintaining the roads from Bobadilla to Algeciras. This assignment would greatly complicate their courtship, so they simply married.
His work required him to move frequently, and after Bobadilla they moved to Campillos, Canete la Real, and other places in Málaga province until landing in Ronda, where their first child to survive infancy was born, Josefa, around 1898. According to family tradition, three offspring before Josefa died at birth or shortly thereafter. From Ronda they moved to Algeciras and then from village to village, ever closer to Gibraltar. An English company was building some docks (diques) in the harbor, and they hired him, so he left his job with Noirot.
Being highly competent, José was soon promoted to first superintendent. He and Josefa lived in nearby Línea de la Concepción in a house on the Calle Reina Cristina, where he also opened a grocery store called El Rincón (The Corner), managed by his resourceful wife. In between Ronda and Línea, at least three other children had been born but also died shortly after birth. The rate of infant mortality in Spain at this time was high; about 20 percent died within the first year, so the demise of a baby was to be expected. The loss of so many children, however, was devastating. Still, they kept trying, even though they were thirty-nine and thirty-four years old, respectively — rather advanced in years for having children. Finally, in La Línea, a son was born, Uncle Pepe, on March 25, 1905. Of course, their chief concern was that he survive infancy and not follow his previous siblings to an early grave. Their spirits sank as he developed double pneumonia a few days after birth, but he soon recovered, something they attributed to divine intervention. (Why such intervention had not been forthcoming on the previous occasions was a question that could not be answered and which they were probably disinclined to ask.) The parents wanted to name him José but were a little leery of doing so because one of the deceased children had been given that name. Still, he was born only a few days after the feast day of Saint Joseph, the family patron, so they tempted fate and named him José. He would lead a long and eventful life.
Given that Papá José had a new mouth to feed, it was a good thing that the wages paid in Gibraltar were better than those in Spain, which is why so many Spanish workers wanted to relocate there. In fact, Papá was able to get jobs for his brother Antonio and his brother-in-law Rafael. Another incentive was the lower prices that workers paid there for tobacco products and food. The area also attracted lots of tourists, which was good for local businesses. But the British did not want their colony overrun with unemployed Spaniards, so though Spanish workers could live in Gibraltar while working there, once their employment was up, they had to leave the next day.
Papá José's father, tired of working in Moclinejo for low wages, heard about how much money people in Cuba were making, so he decided to move there to make his fortune. He took his family with him except for his son Antonio, who kept working in Gibraltar with his brother. Papá José made good money with the English company, but he began to have dreams of Cuba, too, and decided to join his father there. In 1908, he quit his job, closed the grocery, and left for Havana. "Go west, young man, go west," was the clarion call he resolved to heed. He would not be alone in this. There was a conspicuous outflow of population from Spain during this period precisely because of the many problems the country faced, particularly in places like Málaga, whose economy was very depressed in the early 1900s and which suffered through a smallpox epidemic in 1903-4 and a devastating drought in 1905.
* * *
In 1887, the city of Málaga boasted a population of 139,788; by 1900, there were 136,193 residents. Most of the decrease was the result of emigration to Argentina, Brazil — and Cuba. Though this island nation had gained its nominal independence from Spain in 1898, as a result of Spain's war with the United States, it remained a popular destination for Spaniards seeking an opportunity to improve their lot in life. Not for the last time would Romeros now cross an ocean in search of just such an opportunity.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Los Romeros"
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Table of Contents
Foreword Jesús López Cobos Sir Neville Marriner Federico Moreno-Torroba Larregla Cecilia Rodrigo xi
Introduction 1
Part 1 Southern Spain
Chapter 1 From Málaga's Mountains 13
Chapter 2 Cuba, qué linda es Cuba 21
Chapter 3 The City of Paradise, Regained 27
Chapter 4 Seville and Adios 58
Part 2 Sobthern California
Chapter 5 Santa Barbara 73
Chapter 6 Hollywood 94
Chapter 7 Del Mar 115 Chapters The World 121
Intermission: Photo Gallery 128
Part 3 Profiles
Chapter 9 Celedonio and Angelita, the Poet and His Muse 153
Chapter 10 Celin, the Romantic 163
Chapter 11 Pepe, the Philosopher 168
Chapter 12 Angel, the Proteus 176
Part 4 Legacy
Chapter 13 The Romero Technique 193
Chapter 14 The Romero Repertoire 215
Chapter 15 Breakin' Up Is Hard to Do 248
Chapter 16 The Next Generations 256
Encore 271
Appendixes
1 Chronology 275
2 Romero Genealogy 278
3 List of Albums 285
4 Sources and Publications 297
Notes 301
Glossary of Names and Terms 323
Selected Bibliography 329
Index 333