Siboney is a 1929 classic Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

n song by Ernesto Lecuona

Ernesto Lecuona

Ernesto Lecuona y Casado was a Cuban composer and pianist of Canarian father and Cuban mother, and worldwide fame. He composed over six hundred pieces, mostly in the Cuban vein, and was a pianist of exceptional quality....

. The music is in cut time, originally written in C major

C major

C major is a musical major scale based on C, with pitches C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. Its key signature has no flats/sharps.Its relative minor is A minor, and its parallel minor is C minor....

. The lyrics were reportedly written by Lucuona while away from Cuba and is about the homesickness

Homesickness

Homesickness is the distress or impairment caused by an actual or anticipated separation from the specific home environment or attachment objects....

 he is experiencing (Siboney is also a town in Cuba, and can also refer to Cuba in general).

Siboney became a hit in 1931 when performed by the Cuban singer Alfredo Brito. Other artists followed suit, including Caterina Valente

Caterina Valente

Caterina Valente is a singer, dancer, and actress. She was born into an Italian artist family; her father Giuseppe was a well-known accordion player, her mother, Maria Valente, a musical clown...

, Xiomara Alfaro

Xiomara Alfaro

Xiomara Alfaro is a Cuban coloratura soprano. Her interpretation of Cuban composer and pianist Ernesto Lecuona's Siboney was the composer's favorite. She was a star of the Cuban music scene of the 1950s. She became famous as a singer of bolero music in part due to the way she sang them with her...

, Dizzy Gillespie

Dizzy Gillespie

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...

, Nana Mouskouri

Nana Mouskouri

Nana Mouskouri , born Ioánna Moúschouri on October 13, 1934, in Chania, Crete, Greece, is a Greek singer who has sold about 300 million records worldwide in a career spanning over five decades, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. She was known as Nána to her friends and...

 and Percy Faith

Percy Faith

Percy Faith was a Canadian-born American bandleader, orchestrator, composer and conductor, known for his lush arrangements of pop and Christmas standards. He is often credited with creating the "easy listening" or "mood music" format which became staples of American popular music in the 1950s and...

. Siboney was used by Nino Rota

Nino Rota

Nino Rota was an Italian composer and academic who is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti...

 the score for Fellini's nostalgic memoir of the 1930s, "Amarcord

Amarcord

Amarcord is a 1973 Italian comedy-drama film directed by Federico Fellini, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale about Titta, an adolescent boy growing up among an eccentric cast of characters in the fictional town of Borgo in 1930s Fascist Italy...

." It was sung by Connie Francis

Connie Francis

Connie Francis is an American pop singer of Italian heritage and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1950s and 1960s. Although her chart success waned in the second half of the 1960s, Francis remained a top concert draw...

 for the movie "2046

2046 (film)

2046 is a 2004 Hong Kong film written and directed by Wong Kar-wai. It is a loose sequel to the 1991 Hong Kong film Days of Being Wild and the 2000 Hong Kong film In the Mood for Love...

".

An English version of the song was performed by Bing Crosby

Bing Crosby

Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....

 in 1945. In 1942, Gloria Jean

Gloria Jean

Gloria Jean is an American singer and actress who starred or co-starred in 26 feature films between 1939 and 1959. She also made radio, television, stage, and nightclub appearances.-Career:...

 sang the English version in the musical Get Hep to Love

Get Hep to Love

Get Hep to Love is a 1942 musical film starring Gloria Jean, Donald O'Connor, Jane Frazee, Robert Paige and Peggy Ryan. The film was directed by Charles Lamont.-Plot:...

.

English

English lyrics were written by Dolly Morsemusicnotes.com "Musicnotes File: Siboney, Ernesto Lecuna Digital Sheet Music". Accessed 06-May-2011, but they bear no resemblance to the original Spanish. [I did considerable fieldwork in the late 60s and this is the best text I could establish; being a folksong, there is naturally no definitive text. I attach a translation in which the emphasis is predominantly on fidelity, with a few stylistic liberties which do not affect the meaning]: "Siboney, yo te quiero, yo me muero por tu amor, | Siboney, en tu boca la miel puso su dulzor.|| Ven a mi, que te quiero, y que todo tesoro eres tu para mi.| Siboney, al arrullo de la palma pienso en ti. || Siboney, de mi suen[y]os, si no oyes la quija de mi voz?| Siboney, si no vienes, me morire['] de amor.|| Siboney, de mi suen[y]os, te espero con ansia en mi caney,| Porque tu eres el duen[y]o de mi amor, Siboney.|| Oye el eco de mi canto de cristal,| no se pierda por entre el rudo manigual.|| "Siboney, I so love you, I am dying of my love for you,| Siboney, honey has placed all its sweetness in your mouth.|| Come to me, I so want you - for what a treasure you are to me.| Siboney, at the rustle of the palm-trees I think of you.|| Siboney, vision of my dreams, can't you hear my plaintive voice?| Siboney, if you don't return, I will die of my love for you.|| Siboney, of my dreams, I wait with anguish in my hut,| For you are the lord and master of my love, my Siboney.|| Hear the echo of my crystalline refrain,| nor lose it in the forest's rough terrain.||"
Postscript: I am relieved to see that the identical text of the original Spanish is given in the booklet accompanying the CD, Enrique Chia: la musica de Ernesto Lecuona Presumably the Lecuona MSS. in the Dade County Library record what Lecuona found in the field from Cuban peasant farmers and labourers. So the point made above about the necessary absence of an authoritative or ur-text still stands, for the folk will sing their own versions of the song; e.g., Placido Domingo sings line 8 as "Porque tu eres el suen[y]o de mi alma, Siboney". That's how folk-songs are. Its date (of first performance) is also given there as Teatro Regina de la Habana, 29 September 1927, by Compan[y]a Lecuona-Primelles and not 1929, as given above. (12 Nov., 2011).

(Spanish text: fieldwork. late 1960s; translation, Dipak Nandy, retired Lecturer, University of Leicester and University of Kent at Canterbury). 'n[y]' represents the Spanish n with tilde; e['] represents e with an acute accent; 'quija' (line 5) = anxiety; anguish; 'rudo' (line 10) = unkempt, rough.