The
original music for this song is said to have been written by Jose Fernandez
Diaz in 1929 and used regularly in one of his radio programmes.It has also been claimed by some
that the music came from peasant music of Cuba
and the melody was just adapted by Fernandez although the Cuban Supreme
Court has credited him as the composer.The original lyrics to this song were written by
Fernandez too and were about a woman called Gauntanemo but the official
lyrics are based on the first verse of a poem fromSimple Versos Sencillos(Simple
Verses) by Jose Marti and adapted by the Cuban composer Julian
Orbon.The music was later
arranged and adapted by the Cuban guitarist/composer Hector Angulo and the
folk-singer Pete Seeger and a lawsuit was issued on them by Orbon "for
robbery of intellectual property".The song has been performed and recorded by many
artists, including Pete Seeger, and was a hit for The Sandpipers in
1967.
