Bolero

There has not been in the 20th century a genre of song more liked and tasted by Spanish speakers. Born Cuban and renationalized Mexican, the bolero is today a universal music and all the countries of our linguistic area have been its consumers, many of them its creators. There is no doubt that it has been and is, to a greater extent than others, the great Latin American song. But, in addition, it is a dance, the most democratic (and sinful, in its day) of all those of linked couples, and a form of poetry that connects with the most illustrious western lyrical tradition: the one that, born in Provence and stamped on the shores of courtly love, Petrarch and his followers will appraise and renew Modernism, delving into the theme of love-passion until exhaustion. In this brilliant and illuminating essay, José Javier León addresses its roots and its diversity and focuses on an aspect that no one had carefully traced: the bolero constitutes a heretical religion whose creed, imagery and liturgy originate in the conscious violation of the sixth commandments. and ninth of the catechism, that is, those that limit sexual practices and their reverie. There is a bolero for every sin of love. And each vice pursues his bolero.