Manuel Muñoz Cedeño

Considered one of the most outstanding Cuban musicians of the 19th century.

He was born in a modest colonial house located on Mercaderes Street, today Maceo, in Bayamo, in the place that now occupies the Provincial Museum of this city; adjacent to the mansion where two eminent Cubans were born, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and Tristán de Jesús Medina.

His parents were named Calixto Muñoz and Francisca Antonia Cedeño, families of great reputation and respect at that time.

From a young age he was inclined with great love toward music, and also learned other trades such as those of mason and master builder. His great interest in music led him to play several instruments: flute, piano, guitar, violin, cello, becoming a notable composer. He was master of chapel at the Mayor Church and founded an orchestra of classical, sacred, and popular music that became the most important in his native city.

He directed his orchestra so that on June 11, 1868, it would play for the first time at the Te Deum and Corpus Christi Procession and in the presence of Spanish authorities, the subversive march by Perucho Figueredo: La Bayamesa, which later became the National Anthem of Cuba.

When the city of Bayamo was taken by the independence fighters, he was appointed Councilman of the City Hall. Later, with the city back in the hands of Spanish colonialists, he was detained and tried; although a death sentence by firing squad was requested, the defense achieved his acquittal.

He died on December 14, 1895, in the same house that saw him born.

Among his works are: Theme with Variations, for clarinet; Homage, funeral march; Ave María and the songs Elvira, To the Moon, and Beautiful Blonde.

Manuel Muñoz Cedeño is one of those glories of Cuba little studied by historiography and musicology. His most well-known merit is having orchestrated, for the first time, that theme composed by Perucho Figueredo in 1867 that later became the National Anthem. But he was also a composer, arranger, director, patriot, civic man, father of a family, and a Bayamo native proud of his homeland.

Son of Creole parents, he was born in the same Bayamo house where he died almost 83 years later. In the only biographical sketch found, it is told that his approach to music occurred through the band of the Isabel la Católica regiment, in the Cauto area. Oral sources assure that he also learned to play several instruments—violin, cello, flute, and guitar—with musicians of the Alabarderos who operated in the vicinity.

From his father he inherited the position and knowledge of Master Builder, which allowed him to rub shoulders with that entire generation of Bayamo patriots who marked the course of Cuba in the late 19th century: Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Francisco Vicente Aguilera, Perucho Figueredo, Francisco Maceo Osorio, and others.

In Bayamo, 17 children were known to him, four with his wife Juana Jerez; six with Concepción Ginarte; four with Manuela Rivero; one with Manuela Cabrera Martínez (Rafael Cabrera Martínez) and two with Encarnación Olave.

Some of this numerous offspring were musicians, among whom Joaquín Muñoz stands out, second director of the music band he founded, and Rafael Cabrera, composer and heir to that group. The latter had two daughters, Aída and Dulce Cabrera, who treasured much of their father's and grandfather's heritage.

Now, thanks to his executor, Yolanda Aguilera, it is possible to consult those valuable documents in her private collection or in the provincial museum that bears the name of Manuel Muñoz Cedeño. The anecdote tells that Perucho Figueredo, after having written the lyrics and music of La Bayamesa in August 1867, went to Muñoz Cedeño to request the orchestration.

It is also known that he, as Master of Chapel, directed those who performed it during the Corpus Christi celebrations at the Parroquial Mayor of Bayamo on June 11, 1868. He did the same with the choir that sang it on November 8 of the same year. Days before, on October 28, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, then Captain General of the Liberation Army, had appointed him Councilman of the first Free Municipality of Cuba. His signature appears in several documents, including the agreement that abolished slavery on the island.

After the burning of Bayamo, he went to the countryside and few references exist from that period. Oral sources assure that he created a mambí band, but he became ill with dysentery and had to return to the city, or to the ruins that remained of it. Documents from the José Manuel Carbonell Alard Provincial Historical Archive allow us to corroborate that Muñoz Cedeño was one of the few members of the first "free government of Cuba" who were allowed to return, and the reason could be that, after the disaster, there was a true urgency for his work as Master Builder.

In June 1876, during the celebrations for the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Cedeño played Perucho's hymn and the enraged public applauded him. He was immediately taken to Manzanillo where he remained three months incommunicado. A clever lawyer obtained his acquittal alleging, among other mitigating factors, the influence of alcoholic beverages. But the paradoxes of fate placed him in the middle of crossfire between mambí troops that from land shot at the steamship Valmaseda where he was returning to Bayamo by the Cauto River, which was navigable then to Cauto Embarcadero. He emerged from that skirmish wounded. He survived and in 1880 reappeared in documents as one of the members of the Board of Health of the Municipal City Hall.

The life of this man has been reconstructed in jumps, based on oral sources and other documents that were saved from the fire and have appeared later, but his compositional work is incomplete and scattered. Yolanda Aguilera, the provincial museum of Granma, and musician Carlos Puig Premión preserve some transcriptions made by Rafael Cabrera, among them, Ave María and Salve Regina, and the songs To the Moon and Beautiful Blonde. Of the latter we know that during the Ten Years' War its romantic verses were transformed into an impassioned patriotic song and passed to posterity as Beautiful Cuba.

Son of his time, Muñoz Cedeño well deserves to be on the altar of religious, secular, and popular music of the second half of the Cuban 19th century.