Some say that the muses are set free in full-moon nights so that they find the poet.Perhaps, that is the reason why poetry is an enchanted galaxy that is not doomed by time...

THE BARD AND BAMBOO
By Graciela Guerrero Garay                   

Oh, come to Las Tunas
My fellow countrymen.
Here the swallows fly at dawn
Over the lagoons.
Come to listen to the notes
Of my crude song, and with my lyre,
In the blossoming plains,
Say how fortunate is he
Who witnesses the return of the sun.

El  Cucalambé

As a matter of fact, Juan Cristobal Nápoles Fajardo—El Cucalambé—is one of the most emblematic exponents of culture in Las Tunas and the main cultivator of the espinela(after its name in Spanish, it consists of a ten-verse poetical composition) in Cuba in the 19th century. The taste of his poems is that of the countryside, of peasants, of birds. They depict the richness of  our wilderness, the warm fog of dawn, the colorfulness of our flora and our fauna  and the natural grace of  millions of our fellow countrymen who invade rural areas to celebrate at the rhythm of the lute, to make  a harmonic  ritual out  of the verses of their ancestors.

El Cucalambé stepped into eternity, and perhaps it was not his ideal. He was born on July 1st , 1829 in the eastern territory of Las Tunas in the midst of a well-to-do family that owned land and a sugar mill, located in El Cornito. This place is nowadays the site of a countryside motel where bamboo entwines with  the primitive music bequeathed by the Bard.

It is not by chance that every year this tourist facility hosts the popular Cucalambé Festival, where amateurs and professional artists gather to pay tribute to the poet, and to remind everyone that the espinela has not died in spite of the many technological advances of the present millenium.

THE POET´S LIFE

Juan Cristobal´s  parents, Manuel Agustín Nápoles  Estrada and  Antonia María Fajardo had other children: Manuel who was the  author of the first book printed in Las Tunas, Flores del Alma( Flowers of the Soul); Antonio José, who was also a poet, Antonia , Ismaela, Manuela, Ana Gertrudis and María de la Concepción Cleofas. His father also had many other children with his slaves.

Since he was a child, it was evident that his aptitudes were superior to his brother´s. In 1856 he wrote his book Rumores del Hórmigo ( Rumors of the Hórmigo River). This book is a must of Cuban poetry. He also wrote plays like Consecuencias de una falta( Consequences of a Misdeed).In  1859 it became a success in the theaters of Santiago de Cuba and Camaguey.

His pseudonym—El Cucalambé—is the name of a dance brought from Africa, and his poems show the  habits of peasants with a significant feeling of Cubanness. Carlos Tamayo Rodríguez, President of the Union of Writers and Artists in Las Tunas, describes El Cucalambé bewitching the nights with his ever-lasting poems and songs, staying at the houses of peasants overnight to awake as the poet of dawn. He disappeared in Santiago de Cuba in 1861