La Golondrina: A Song History
"La Golondrina" ("The Swallow") has music by Narciso Serradell Sevilla, who was born in Alvarado, Veracruz, in 1843 and enlisted at 19, in 1862, to fight the French invasion of Mexico.[1] After the fighting around Puebla he was captured and sent into exile in France, and by 1865 he was home again in Veracruz, leading bands and teaching music.[1] Sources date the melody to 1862 but differ on whether Serradell wrote it before he left Mexico or after he reached Paris.[1][2] Today the lyrics are usually attributed to the Basque-born writer Niceto de Zamacois.[1] A much-repeated legend holds that the words go back to an Arabic text by the sixteenth-century Morisco leader Abén Humeya, but the UCLA Frontera Collection essay judges the tale improbable; it also observes that Francisco Martínez de la Rosa's play Abén Humeya, staged in Paris in 1830, includes a sung Morisco poem of exile that shares the later song's mood of longing.[1]
Félix Bracquemond, Swallows, etching, 1882. Swallows over water, shown for the bird of the song's title.
By the turn of the century the song was circulating in print and on record: an arrangement by A. F. Heckle was published in Houston by Thos. Goggan & Bro. in 1900.[2] The Frontera essay, drawing on an earlier history of the song, reports a U.S. Marine Band recording from 1896 or 1897, a vocal cylinder by Arturo Adamini for Edison in 1898, and Victor releases by the baritone Emilio de Gogorza under assumed names, starting in 1900.[1] Its migrating swallow came to stand for longing for home, especially among exiles, and the song became, in the essay's words, "a cultural means of bidding farewell on any occasion," heard at departures, retirements and funerals.[1] Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole and Elvis Presley are among the many who later recorded it, and a chorus sings it during a farewell scene in Sam Peckinpah's film The Wild Bunch (1969).[1]
Neal Walters and Heidi Cerrigione include it, in the keys of D and C, in 30 Old Time Tunes, a set of two compatible sheet-music books, one for dulcimer and one for autoharp, each giving 30 songs in two keys, with MP3 demo tracks.[3]
Sources
- UCLA Library, Strachwitz Frontera Collection: "'La Golondrina': A Song that Soars Across Centuries and Crosses Cultures".
- IMSLP: "La golondrina (Serradell, Narciso)".
- Neal Walters and Heidi Cerrigione: "30 Old Time Tunes".
- Image: Félix Bracquemond, Swallows, etching, 1882. The Cleveland Museum of Art.