Manuel Corona was a prominent Cuban composer, guitarist, and singer; born on June 17, 1880, in Caibarén, the former province of Las Villas. Along with Sindo Garay, Alberto Villalón, and Rosendo Ruiz, he formed one of the four great groups of traditional Cuban trova.
With the end of the Cuban War of Independence, he moved to Havana, where he began working at the La Eminencia tobacco factory. There, the supervisor taught him his first guitar chords. Instinctively following his musical calling, he traveled to Santiago de Cuba at the beginning of the 20th century, where he established a relationship with a group of troubadours then known as “boleristas.”
Manuel Corona wrote his bolero “Doble Inconsciencia” in 1900, but it wasn’t until 1902, as a result of his meetings with other musicians at the Hotel Colón in Santiago de Cuba, that maestro José Pepe Sánchez, one of the earliest cultivators of the bolero and the father of Cuban troubadour songs, heard him and commented: “You’ll be something remarkable, Corona, I’m telling you.” Also notable was his relationship with Sindo Garay and his children, who were also closely involved in music.
Several of his creations became popular in the first decade of the century, including Mercedes, the song with which the legendary troubadour María Teresa Vera made her public debut in 1911.
Manuel Corona developed the bolero, guaracha, criolla, punto cubano, and romanza. His music was used in the Mexican film “La bien pagada.” His repertoire includes songs such as “Confesión de mi guitarra,” “Adriana,” “Una mirada,” “Las flores del Edén,” and “Graciella,” among countless others. His most notable compositions were “Longina,” “Santa Cecilia,” “La Alfonsa,” and “Aurora.” A large number of his songs bear women’s names, so much so that he is the Cuban trova composer with the greatest number of compositions with this characteristic, with a total of eighty. María Teresa Vera and Rafael Zequeira were key players in the dissemination of his work. According to María Teresa Linares, Manuel often interacted with other composers through “responses,” which were simply songs in response to other songs. Such is the case of the song “Animada,” which was written as a response to “Timidity.”
Due to his professional rivalry with Sindo Garay, for many years the Cuban trova scene was divided into two main camps: Manuel’s followers and Sindo’s. This artistic rivalry was beneficial to the development of Cuban music because, in addition to attacks and controversies, it also produced some very good Cuban songs.
Around 1916, Manuel Corona joined a sextet as guitarist and lead singer with Alfredo Boloña (marimba player and director) and singer Hortensia Valerón. This was apparently the first of the sonero groups of this type to make phonographic recordings.
Among his first works recorded on phonographic media, beginning in 1917, were “Where’s the Money,” “I Played It,” “I Roll Over at Carnival,” “How Bad Women Are,” “Capricious Corona,” and “Beautiful Mulata.” During those years, he recorded with Armando Viañez, Pancho Majagua, and José Castillo.
Of all his work, one of his best-known boleros, Aurora, was one of the first great hits of the Sexteto Habanero in 1925, when the group’s records were beginning to gain popularity both in Cuba and in other Caribbean countries.
At the end of the 1920s, his left hand was injured in a street brawl, and from then on, his guitar playing was limited, but this did not prevent him from composing with even greater vigor and tenacity. Manuel Corona was (compared only by Alberto Villalón) considered the most prolific Cuban composer from the beginning of the century until the 1930s.
Despite his talent and recognition among Cuban artists, he was always dogged by economic hardship. In an interview with musicologist Odilio Urfé, he confessed that throughout his life he had only earned about two hundred dollars in royalties because his music had, until then, remained unregistered. Due to this financial shortfall, he performed whenever he could in cafes, bodegas, parties, and gatherings in private homes that barely provided him with food. His health gradually deteriorated, and he increasingly relied on the help of a few friends, who became fewer and fewer.
Some time before his death, the Cuban government awarded him a small pension along with a medal in recognition of his work. Corona was unable to attend the awarding ceremony at the Presidential Palace because his alcohol addiction forced him to stop at a nearby bar.
Shortly after, on January 9, 1950, Manuel Corona died in a small room in the Jaruquito bar in Marianao. His funeral was conducted by a group of Cuban composers.
Many Cubans have paid tribute to his work, such as the sisters Berta and Amelia Martí, who dedicated the album “Antología de Manuel Corona” to him in the early 1970s. Kike Corona also paid tribute to him with the CD “Corona sings to Corona,” and other great artists have performed his work over the years, including Barbarito Diez, Abelardo Barroso and the Sensación Orchestra, Pablo Milanés, and Beatriz Márquez, among others.