Likewise, the musicalization of verses also contributed with its disappearance, since it was better to have more freedom without any strong linkage to a rhythmic base. The piano, with more expressive possibilities than the guitar, while maintaining the cinquillo as a rhythmic figure in the left hand, allowed the introduction of melodic turns of another kind that finally prevailed over the rigid rhythm of the cinquillo until it finally disappeared. Īt that time, when dancing manifestations prevailed, some composers, not guitar players but pianists, began composing boleros that gradually managed to be different from the previous ones. Nevertheless, we must clarify the fact that during those years, there was still a development of the work of those Cuban troubadours who resorted to their guitar and voices to interpret some of the most beautiful songs in our history, many of them boleros. We can certainly speak of a traditional or troubadour-like bolero different from the one internationally disseminated and acknowledged some years later.ĭuring the boom of son and the apogee of danzón, this traditional bolero was partially relegated for it was not eminently for dancing and was not assimilated by the new sonero septets and sextets nor by the typical orchestras or charangas. During this stage, including the first decades of the 20 th Century, this genre had its own physiognomy, mainly because of the cinquillo, thus emerging a rhythm that easily merged both the Hispanic and African elements. The most important composers of the Traditional Trova composed a great number of pieces using this rhythm. The first boleros adopted the song form, or structure, with two musical parts or periods, almost always separated by an instrumental part and incorporating to the guitar accompaniment -and, occasionally to the melody- a rhythmic element which is characteristic in our music: the Cuban cinquillo, also adopted by the danzón and being one of its features, in the beating of the pailas. It is not even a modification of the former. The song entitled "Tristezas" by Pepe Sánchez was the first Cuban bolero registered by history which had nothing to do with the so-called "Spanish bolero " present in Cuba since the 18 th Century together with other manifestations of similar origin as the fandangos and the seguidillas among others. With the New Trova this term came out once more, though now with its own characteristics to designate a music always linked to texts and eminently conceived to be sang and through its singing, express feelings and even criteria and concepts concerning life in general and love in particular. They used, developed and even created some musical forms or genres within the general song framework. Since the end of the 19 th Century songs composed by our first troubadours began to appear.