Skip to main content

What is the habanera

The time of havanera is defined by the rythmical model of corchea with point, semi corchea, two corcheas slied on the former country dances.

The invention of the havanera, loaded with derivations in different American and European music areas, was a new rhythmic and melodic formula, a new model or musical cell to be followed that finished by influencing to other genres, such as the Caribbean danzón or the Argentinian tango. The journalist and learner Xavier Febrés defines the havanera as a song of moderate and slow tempo, plain and melancholic melody, rhythmical compass, languid balancing, romantic lyricism and undulating movement. The investigator Teresa Pérez Daniel affirms that the rythm of havanera or tango is a musical genre whose simbiosis is mainly because of different musical sedimentation processes, with borrowings from the popular and the. because of movements and circular exchanges that go and come back that end in the crystalization of the genres.

The  denomitation of havanera became popular before in Spain, France and Mexico than in Cuba, where for many decades, they went on calling them dance, american, american tango, Cuban dance or country dance.