DESCRIPTION:
This started out as a poem written in 1899 by Cuban writer Jose Marti. The poem is about a girl from Guantanamo and was written from the point of view of a Cuban revolutionary. In the early 1960s Pete Seeger heard Hector Angulo singing a Cuban folk song using Marti's words based on a traditional melody adapted by bandleader Joseito Fernandez. This was the time of the Cuban missile crisis and the peace activist Seeger decided to adapt it in honor of Marti. He combined Marti's original Spanish with spoken English and made it into a song for the peace movement.