As a guest for the University of Panama and the Matices Group, the young troubadour entertained the public at the Manuel E. Amador gallery, from the higher studies center, leading an imaginary musical tour that went from “La Bayamesa” (1851), Cuba’s first acknowledged patriotic song, to his own generation’s millennial tunes.

Berazain warmly narrated the innards of the piece written for a woman, Luz Vazquez, and the sense of love in its essence.

Many were impressed by the speaker’s careful approach to that 19th century’s song, written by José Fornaris, as a poem that would become over time a legacy of freedom and a patriotic symbol that imbued Cuba’s national zeal with romanticism at its best.

Berazain moved forwards in his retelling, eventually reaching the first bolero in history, “Tristezas”, written in Cuba in 1885, by José Viviano (Pepe) Sánchez. He then pinpointed the influences under which Cuban songwriters of the 19th century wrote their creations, namely Haiti and the United States, and went on to introduce other musical icons as Sindo Garay or Manuel Corona, belting out some old-time classics as “Longina” (1918), by the latter; or Maria Teresa Vera’s “20 years” (1936).

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