Marta Emilia Valdés González

Composer, guitarist and performer of her works. Marta Valdés's bolero creations reflect a finished artistic work that has allowed her to travel through time. Her harmony—in close interrelation with the character of the melody and the sense of the text—plays a fundamental role in this achievement, which has allowed her to transcend the references or patterns of behavior established during the 1950s.

Marta Valdés becomes the most outstanding figure of a second generation of the filin movement, and initiates a refinement of the sonority that had been dominant until then within the framework of the tendency. Thus, her work becomes a bridge toward the appearance of a new song in Cuba. And not only in the order of strict musical aesthetics, but also in the poetic realm.


She studied guitar with Francisqueta Vallalta, 1945. In 1955 she began as a composer with her song Palabras.

She continues her guitar studies with Leopoldina Núñez, 1957; with Aida Teseiro she studied solfège and theory, 1962. In 1963 she joins the courses that were then taught at the Seminario de Música Popular, directed by pianist and musicologist Odilio Urfé, and with a faculty made up of Vicente González Rubiera (Guyún), Alejo Carpentier, Manuel Moreno Fraginals and Alfredo Diez Nieto, among others; she completed them, starting in 1971, with composer Harold Gramatges.

The author has based her creations on genres such as bolero and song within the feeling style.

The first recorded title by Marta Valdés was No es preciso in the voice of Fernando Alvarez in the year 1957. At that same time, Vicentico Valdés released En la imaginación on the market, the first bolero of a long series of these that the author would include in her recording repertoire, with standouts being Deja que siga sola, Tú dominas, No hagas caso, among others of great universal transcendence.

She made her debut in 1958 on radio as a performer of her songs, and in 1959, she did so on television. In 1963 she participates, along with other composers, in the Forum del Feeling held at the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí, where Alejo Carpentier gave an important lecture on this modality of Cuban song. In 1964 she begins to work in the Grupo Teatro Estudio as a musical advisor; in 1967 she participates in the Encuentro de la Canción Protesta, sponsored by the Casa de las Américas.

Among the performers of her work are Elena Burke, Doris de la Torre, Bola de Nieve, Cheo Feliciano, Reneé Barrios and more recently, prestigious South American performers who have joined this list.

As a performer of her songs, she has performed at Festivals and offered personal presentations in Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil.

Together with poet Nancy Morejón, she has presented herself at Poetry Festivals in several countries of America with the show Piedra Pulida in which both Cuban creators have displayed their works.

Parallel to song and bolero, she has pursued a long trajectory composing music for theater and also publishing writings on Cuban popular music.

From the musical point of view, Marta Valdés is characterized in her compositions by departing from the conventional harmonic framework of the tonal and extended extratonal chords, deeply rooted in filin composers, and begins to create in profusion melodic turns that apparently are not modulating, because modulating is not difficult. In reality, if one knows the rules that govern harmony treatises, they are not true modulations, since modulation means change of tonality; this technique, to reaffirm itself, demands its corresponding cadential passage. None of this is present in Marta Valdés's work. When you listen to some of her songs, it seems that she is going to modulate, but with boldness she moves toward another apparent new tonic on which she does not dwell. She, with a manifest tonal restlessness, flirts with different tones, but without surrendering to them. This could be called tonalizations.

She wrote the incidental music for "El becerro de Oro," by Joaquín Lorenzo Luaces, for which in 1985 she earned the prize for the best creation of this type of music in the National Theater Competition of the Unión Nacional de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (UNEAC), and in 1986 she was awarded the prize for the best music created for a stage production, at the Camagüey Theater Festival, for "La zapatera prodigiosa," by Federico García Lorca.

In 1987 she traveled to Mexico as part of the show "Toda una época," together with César Portillo de la Luz, José Antonio Méndez, Elena Burke and Consuelo Vidal, when they presented themselves on television and several nightclubs. That same year, she returned to Mexico to participate in the Bolero Festival that took place at the Teatro Reforma and at the Auditorio Nacional; in 1988 she returned to Mexico, this time to perform at the Teatro Ciudadela.

Awards
"Síncopa de Plata" Award for the album "Elena Burke canta a Marta Valdés"
1978 Grand Prize, the Radio and Television Prize and the Prize from the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UNEAC), in the Adolfo Guzmán Competition of Cuban Music for her work "Canción eterna de la juventud".
1985 Prize for best music in the National Theater Competition UNEAC for the music of the work El becerro de oro, by Joaquín Lorenzo Luaces.
1986 Prize for the best music created for a stage production, at the Camagüey Theater Festival for the music of the work La zapatera prodigiosa, by Federico García Lorca.
1992 Annual Prize for "Recognition for Created Work" awarded by the Association of Musicians of the UNEAC.
2001 Nomination at Cubadisco 2001, song and music production categories with the CD Nuestra Canción, Unicornio, La Habana.
The government and cultural institutions of Matanzas have awarded her the Medal of the Tricentennial of the city.
Distinction for National Culture
Alejo Carpentier Medal.

Books
"The Arrangement for Guitar and Voice in Popular Song". Published in Colombia, 1994.
"Cancionero propio". Ediciones Vigía of the Casa del Escritor de Matanzas, 1995.

Works
Ballad
"¿Hacia dónde?", 1967.
Boleros
"Y con tus palabras", 1955;
"No es preciso" 1955;
"Tú dominas", [1956];
"No te empeñes más" 1957;
"Para qué rectificar" 1957;
"Deja que siga sola", 1958;
"Tú no hagas caso", 1959;
"Vuelve en ti", 1959;
"Si vuelves", 1963;
"Sin ir más lejos", 1968;
"Mutis", 1970;
"Cantaré victoria" and "Saludo y homenaje a Alicia Alonso", text: Eliseo Diego, 1978;
"Hay todavía una canción";
"Vienes", 1988.
Song-Bolero
"Demasiado que pedir" 1955;
"En la imaginación", 1955;
"Llegabas", 1959.
Song
"Es contigo", 1957;
"Envenéname los labios", 1957;
"Por este amor", 1957;
"Juego a olvidarme de ti", 1957;
"Tengo", 1957;
"Precisamente a ti", 1958;
"Tú no sospechas", 1958;
"Llegabas", 1960;
"Qué largo camino anduve", 1962, text: Nicolás Guillén;
"Canción sin título", 1968;
"Como un río", 1968;
"Hay mil formas", 1968;
"Romance de tus nombres", 1968;
"Sin ir más lejos", 1968;
"Llora", 1968;
"Canción desde otro mundo", 1969;
"Canción difícil, Canción fácil", 1970;
"Mutis", 1970;
"La canción", 1972;
"Aida", 1973;
"Macayá", 1973;
"José Jacinto", 1974;
"¡Ay Plácido!" (to the poet Plácido), 1976;
"Canción eterna de la juventud", 1978;
"Canción del año nuevo", 1981;
"Trini", 1981.
Criolla
"Aunque no te vi llegar", 1968.
Habanera
"Por La Habana", 1968;
"Ave de madera", 1978.
Incidental Music for Theater
"Pasado a la criolla", 1962, by José Ramón Brene, under the direction of Berta Martínez;
"El becerro de oro", 1985 (wins the prize for best music for a stage production at the Scenic Arts Competition (called by UNEAC)), by Joaquín Lorenzo Luaces, under the direction of Armando Suárez del Villar;
"La zapatera prodigiosa", 1986 (wins the prize for the best use of music for a stage production, at the Camagüey Theater Festival), by Federico García Lorca, under the direction of Berta Martínez.
Son Montuno
"Sorpresa de harina con boniato", 1960.