Luis Casas Romero

One of Cuba's most prolific musicians, creator of the criolla. Flutist, composer and conductor of orchestras and military bands, independence fighter.

Son of Luis Casas Cuba and Adelina Romero García, he was raised in a humble family. His father made his living as a tobacco worker.

Being very young, he learned to play the accordion in a self-taught manner, until at nine years of age, he received his first solfège lessons. Shortly thereafter, the boy was hired as a flutist for the religious festivals of the Escuelas Pías in the region, at public dances and theaters. At 13 years old he was already performing concert pieces and at 14 he was appointed Member of Merit of the Popular Society of Santa Cecilia.

When the 1895 war broke out against the Spanish metropolis, he interrupted his studies and his precocious artistic career to join the troops of the Liberating Army under the command of General Lope Recio Loynaz. During the war he was appointed bugler and received a wound whose consequences he suffered for the rest of his life.

The precarious situation left behind by the end of the war meant that Casas Romero had to work as a typographer, compositor and proofreader for the newspaper Las Dos Repúblicas.

Later he was a music critic for this publication and for La Discusión; and he taught music classes and played at private dances and parties. During this period he formed and directed the Children's Band of Camagüey, with children under 14 years old, which played in the retretas of Agramonte Park.

He married, for the first time, in his native land, in 1902, to Roselina Rodríguez Rivera. From this union six children were born, four girls and two boys. Several years later, in 1942, in Havana, he married María Esther Lamelo Salazar.

In the early years of the twentieth century, pressed by economic difficulties, he was forced to tour the interior of the country, at the head of the zarzuela company of Blanquita Becerra's father and other music bands, such as those of Trinidad and Santiago de Cuba.

He returned in 1907, the date when he made several presentations at the Teatro Martí alongside Moisés Simons, which were very praised by the press of the time. He shared the stage with other great figures, including Pedro Pablo Diez, Hubert de Blanck and Enrique Peña. His mastery in orchestral direction and flute performance earned him the sympathy of the public and the press, which came to describe him as "one of the greatest flutists in America."

He cultivated almost all musical genres: serenades, danzones, military marches, guajiras, waltzes, etc. He composed more than twenty-three zarzuelas, among which stand out El teniente Alegría, Almoneda nacional, El globo cautivo, La golfemia, Alma criolla, La Cenicienta and Portafolio Cubano, whose premiere at the Gran Teatro Payret, on September 29, 1911 was a resounding success.

Besides musical revues and operettas, he is credited with one of the most autochthonous forms of Cuban music: the criolla; more lively than the clave, with a more graceful and syncopated melody. Some of the most remembered are Carmela, Hortensia and Lola, all composed in 1910. He wrote a hundred songs, among which stands out El Mambí, premiered in 1912 and become an anthology piece. Another of the most popular is Si llego a besarte. He also composed numerous military marches, of which unfortunately no scores remain.

According to the opinion of Gonzalo Roig, he was a virtuoso of his instrument and one of the few Cuban composers who ennobled the typical songs by elaborating them "with careful harmonic and orchestral attire." His works were premiered with great success in the capital theaters Martí, Molino Rojo and Payret.

He developed important work as a music professor. On September 22, 1909, Hubert de Blanck appointed him professor of the Flute subject at the National Conservatory of Music. He was also a professor of Music Theory, Harmony, Composition and Band and Orchestra instruments; and he was part of numerous Examination Tribunals of the time.

In 1913 he presented himself to a competitive examination to enter the Army of the Republic. He obtained the rank of first lieutenant and was entrusted with the mission of organizing the Artillery Band. After some time he was promoted to captain and became Director of the Band of the General Staff of the Liberating Army, a position he held for more than thirty years and until his death.

Furthermore, he was appointed Inspector General of the Military Bands of Cuba. With the Army music corps he traveled to the Dominican Republic (1913 and 1924), to Canada (1923) where he obtained an international award in a competition in which 53 bands from different countries participated. He also visited Key West and Tampa (1939) and Mexico (1938).

In 1918, together with his son Luis Casas Rodríguez, he founded the first electromechanical factory of pianola rolls; until that moment its production was manufactured and there was only one manufacturer, Francisco Pereira y Moya. This company was very successful, to the point that the American company QRS delivered its matrices to him so that the rolls could be manufactured on the Island, although it maintained the name of the foreign factory. Many prestigious composers collaborated with him: Ernesto Lecuona, Jaime Prats, Moisés Simons, Nilo Menéndez, Vicente Lanz, among others. Casas Romero's interest was to promote Cuban music, a premise he maintained throughout his life.

Radio, one of the most important discoveries of the twentieth century, was another of his great passions. In the ten decade, together with his son, he set up his first amateur plant, the Q2LC based on a "Calpits" circuit of five watts, which broadcast in the band of seventy-five to one hundred fifty meters, through telephony and telegraphy.

Later, he obtained a permit from the Director of Communications and founded 2LC, on August 22, 1922, in which the first radio transmission in Cuba took place. This inaugural broadcast gave the time, announced with the traditional nine o'clock cannon shot and, subsequently, offered a weather bulletin, all in the voice of Casas Romero himself. The program became progressively more complex; in addition to bulletins and the time, his daughter Zoila Casas Rodríguez presented a musical number, which made her the first woman to exercise radio broadcasting, not only in Cuba but in Latin America. To this was added a children's program, the broadcast of Cuban music directly from a phonograph installed in front of the microphone and the use of sound effects.

The 2LC was officially inaugurated on April 16, 1923, when it was licensed to broadcast on medium wave, in the band of three hundred sixty meters. On this occasion, Dr. Armando Cartaya, General Director of Communications of the country, was present.

Casas Romero conducted the orchestra that performed the National Anthem at the inauguration of PWX, the first official radio station to broadcast in the national territory, on October 10, 1922. During the first weeks after PWX was inaugurated, it ceased its transmissions for more than two hours daily to give way to 2LC, which offered the weather information service and the time.

The 2LC remained on the air until the year 1928.
When PWX changed its call letters to CMC, owned by the Cuban Telephone Company, a period began in which Casas occupied the position of Artistic Director; a position he resigned from to devote himself to the founding and operation of what he would call "the Cuban stations," for not having American financing: COC and CMCK.

The COC, converted to COCO by public grace, went on the air on December 16, 1933 from the residence of its owner, located on San Miguel street at the corner of Manrique, current Centro Habana. This was the first shortwave station aimed at abroad, but later it would link to the signal of CMCK, to broadcast to the medium wave receivers of Cuba. From the combination COCO-CMCK emerged a phrase popularized in a humorous program of the time: "El coco se me seca."

Through his stations, Casas Romero promoted the consumption of the best quality Cuban music, at a time when Cuban society was exposed to foreign influence in all areas. The musical theme with which they began their broadcasts was "El Mambí."

In 1932, he gave a lecture at the Cuban Theosophical Society, titled "Music and Its Influences" in which he describes a visit made to the city of Santiago de Cuba in 1904, an occasion on which he attended the French tombs.

In the mid-1930s, when the Reviewing Commission for the National Anthem of Cuba was organized, he was tasked with correcting the errors in the version by Antonio Rodríguez Ferrer (1898). By 1937, the editions of the Anthem printed by the General Staff of the Army officially stated on its cover: "Anthem Revised by Master Luis Casas Romero." This is the current version.

On February 14, 1938, the City Council of Camagüey, at the request of several prominent journalists and musicians, unanimously declared Casas Romero, Favorite Son of Camagüey. The agreement was made public the next day in the newspaper El Camagüeyano, with a note highlighting that the parchment and medal would be paid for by the musicians of the city.

On May 16, 1940, Luis Casas Romero read his acceptance speech as a Full Member of the National Academy of Arts and Letters, of whose Music Section he became Secretary, titled "Music and Its Influence on Human Destiny." The stations COCO and CMCK broadcast the investiture ceremony.

In 1945 he published a pamphlet titled Manual del Corneta where he compiled bugle calls.

Casas Romero obtained numerous decorations as a musician, composer, citizen and patriot: Veteran of the 1895 War of Independence, Military Merit, Commemorative Medal of the Centennial of the Birth of Antonio Maceo (1945), Gold Medal at the Toronto Exposition (1923), from the City Council of Cienfuegos (1919), from the City Council of Havana and from the National Academy of Arts and Letters.

He also received honorary decorations from Mexico, United States of America, Santo Domingo, Venezuela and Costa Rica, among others.

He died on October 30, 1950, victim of a long illness, which was accompanied by the national press through headlines and news items. Extended obituary articles were also dedicated to him.

His work has transcended to the present day. At the triumph of the Revolution, the National Council of Culture named the Municipal Academy of Music of Camagüey after him.

On May 24, 1972, on the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of his birth, a plaque was unveiled on the facade of his birthplace, which reads:
HERE WAS BORN LUIS CASAS ROMERO, CREATOR OF THE MUSICAL GENRE "CRIOLLA" AND AUTHOR OF EL MAMBÍ.

On September 18, 1979, the country's first Vocational School of Art was inaugurated, which bears his name.

Works

Song
Adiós, amor. Adiós al bohío.

Criolla
Alma criolla. Ana Sofía. Angelina. Bajo el palmar. Calma mi sed. Camagüey. Camagüeyana. Capablanca. Carmela. Carola. Criolla. Cubanita. Decepción. El mambí. Mercedes. Mi bohío. Patria querida. Serenata cubana. Zoraida, among others.

Danzón
Almoneda nacional, from the zarzuela of the same title. Arrollar. Canción del torerito. Cumbanchando. El sinsonte. La niña de mis amores. La viuda alegre. Mujeres y flores. Pensando en ti. Mala entraña, among others.

Zarzuela
El globo cautivo. El teniente alegría. Enredos matrimoniales. Fuente de juventud, zarzuela in one act. La cenicienta, among others.

Other genres
A orillas del Tínima, Cuban medley
Al pie del coco, potpourri; Amistad, Cuban potpourri
Amo el sendero, ballad; ¡A arrollar!, clave
Así eres tú, bolero; Así eres tú, cubana, caprice-bolero
Capricho núm. 1, Cuban Caprice núm. 2, Cuban Caprice núm. 3
Flores marchitas, small overture for piano and orchestra
Si llego a besarte, bolero
Yo soy guajira, Cuban caprice
Zapateo cubano, zapateo; among others.

Source: EnCaribe