Maestra María Teresa "Teté" Linares Dies in La Habana at Age 100

January 27, 2021

The researcher, musicologist and Cuban pedagogue María Teresa "Teté" Linares passed away this Tuesday, reported the Cuban Institute of Music on its Facebook page.

María Teresa Linares Savio (1920-2021) was one of the prestigious Cuban musicologists of her generation and of those that followed. She was the recipient of the María Teresa García Montes de Giberga Prize in 1958 for her essay "Spanish Influence in Cuban Music".

Her status as a researcher of merit; the title of doctor honoris causa in Art Sciences; the National Prize for Cultural Research (1999) and the Music Prize (2006), her merit membership in Uneac and the International Fernando Ortiz Prize 2000, among other distinctions and a long and fruitful life dedicated to Cuban music and its study, speak to her trajectory and her contribution to the island's culture.

She received the Félix Varela Order, the highest decoration awarded by the State Council of the Republic of Cuba to personalities who have made extraordinary contributions to artistic and literary culture.

Between 1948 and 1956, she conducted field work with her husband, musicologist Argeliers León, in various areas of the country to gather information, songs and melodies of Hispanic and African origin.

In the sixties she offered seminars at the National Theater and courses at the Alejandro García Caturla Conservatory, and contributed to the training of art instructors. She worked at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba, and from 1974 onwards she dedicated herself to advising and producing long-playing records for Egrem that collected exponents of the music she had collected in different parts of the country, as well as from the different musical genres of our country.

She is responsible for the production in Cuba of the first Anthology of Afro-Cuban Music, a record series of nine volumes produced by Egrem, and the texts of two of the volumes: Old Afro-Cuban Songs, volume I and Oru de Igbodu, volume II.

She taught classes, lectures and seminars in Puerto Rico, the Canary Islands, Nicaragua and Mexico, among other countries. In 1984 and until 1997 she assumed the direction of the National Museum of Music and during those years, through her connection with CIDMUC (Center for Research and Development of Cuban Music), she led the musicologists of that institution to their first practical field studies, which they only knew from the theoretical classes of Argeliers León.

As a musicologist, one of her most transcendent written contributions is found in her book Music and the People (1974).

Furthermore, she collaborated as an author of important articles and essays for various magazines such as Nuestro Tiempo, Pro Arte Musical, Boletín Música de Casa de las Américas and Catauro, as well as publications abroad. She was also vice president of the Fernando Ortiz Foundation.

According to the publication of the Cuban Institute of Music, her ashes will be deposited in the family pantheon.

"She dedicated her life to researching the popular and folkloric heritage of the Cuban nation. Her work was not limited to the recording, description and analysis of processes, repertoires, composers and performers, but also transcended through her invaluable contribution to institutional management and the dissemination of music in Cuba," the institution emphasized.

María Teresa Linares teaching class, in 1963. Photo: Taken from cidmucmusicacubana.

"With Argeliers we were nourished by anthropological methodology, Africanist studies, the work of Fernando Ortiz and a strict discipline for scientific life. Teté, or María Teresa, delighted us with her practical classes in popular music, both of African and Hispanic origin and, above all, with the variants of the Cuban punto, country melodies, zapateado, the décima, habanera clave songs and the antiphonal choirs of the Regla de Ocha, arará and conga.

"With her we learned to enjoy María Cervantes, Bola de Nieve and Celina González, among many icons of Cuban music. Teté's classes at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore were delicious balms that shaped our taste and refined our ear.

"(…) Teté and Argeliers always had a life very committed to musicological studies and their dissemination. They were exemplary teachers in the conservatories of the capital without ceasing to engage in research and field work that always motivated them so much.

"Both knew that what we call base music, that is to say original music, was a ferment of the rich arsenal of Cuban popular music. Teté Linares demonstrated, through her copious investigative work, how the process of transculturation of musical genres and modalities would go on to form part of our music, acquiring a new physiognomy". (Miguel Barnet, Granma, August 2020)

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