I suppose it’s a true folk song. I mean, if Pete Seeger does it, then it must be genuine, right? But what is so great about it?
Like Appalachian hillbilly music, it may be true to its roots ,or whatever, and maybe is deeply meaningful to the poor peasants mentioned in the lyrics.
But why has it been so popular in middle class white America for 50 years, a true classic?
Am I missing something?
Sorry, not much to add here. I just wanted to mention that if you don’t like the song, DON’T go to Cuba. I must have heard it 50 times in 7 days.
I’ve hated that song ever since I had to act it out in a game of charades.
Plus, you can sing the “One-Ton Tomato” version and endlessly amuse yourself.
Guantanamara–what’s so great about it?
I like it because it reminds me of Nancy Kwan in Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. 
I don’t remember whether the song was actually in the movie - though I think it was - or whether I perhaps heard it on the radio while en route to or from the movie, but that song has made me think of her every time I’ve heard it or heard reference to it for the last forty years. 
It really depends on whose recording you listen to. Try La India del Oriente’s version.
I went to lyricsplayground.com and found an English translation of a couple of verses. It’s rather veiled, but it seems to be about finding beauty in life under Castro. Guantanamera appears to mean “a woman from Guantanamo.” My puny Span-Eng dictionary does not contain “Guajira,” the other word in the chorus. I feel sure that Guajira is not the Cuban version of the big green guy who tore up Tokyo. 
"I am a truthful man from this land of palm trees
Before dying I want to share these poems of my soul
My verses are light green
But they are also flaming red
(the next verse says,)
I cultivate a rose in June and in January
For the sincere friend who gives me his hand
And for the cruel one who would tear out this
heart with which I live
I do not cultivate thistles nor nettles
I cultivate a white rose."
I have never been skilled at deciphering poetry. Feel free to try your hand.
I checked to make sure and Wiki confirms. Guajira is type of music. Cite.
I really like the song in its more traditional versions, but I’m also a HUGE fan of the newer version by Wyclef. Fantastic.
Why? I dunno. It’s a pretty song and has nice lyrics.
When I was a wee lad, my mother played the Joan Baez version of Guantanamara into the ground. I mean over and over and over again.
To this day I am less than fond of both Baez and that song, though objectively I can recognize the merits of both.
- Tamerlane
For me, the song is indelibly associated in my mind with the ending of the movie Last Night, where it seemed to have just the right wistful, happy/sad tone. (Great movie.)
You obviously didn’t hear Pat Boone’s rendition.
we are not amused. Now I have that stuck in my head.
Historical background: Back in the days before Castro, Cuba was ruled by a dictator named Fulgencio Batista, whom Sidney Greenstreet was born to play the part of – a classic tinpot corrupt banana-republic strongman.
And those who yearned to overthrow the corrupt Batista regime and install a new populist democracy in its place comprised a movement that held up Jose Marti, a deceased Cuban patriot, as their ideal, and used the song Guantanamera as their Marseillaise.
Of course, we know what happened: Castro became leader of that movement, led them to overthrow Batista in 1959, revealed himself as a closet Communist, and all the fun stuff of the early 60s – Bay of Pigs invasion, Cuban missile crisis, etc. – ensued.
But until that broke, Guantanamera was a protest song, a song of the repressed Cuban people seeking to be free of the corrupt Batista dictatorship. And now it’s for all practical purposes the “God Bless America” of the Castro regime.
It also made for a cool dance song in the movie “Antz”.
thanks, I didnt know that.
From the webpage of the Reales Academias de la Lengua Española (www.rae.es), translation mine:
guajiro/a (from Arahuaco “guajiro”, master, lord, powerful man)
- m/f, Cuba: person who lives and works in a rural area or who comes from a rural area.
- m/f, Cuba: person with bad-but-not-too-bad manners
- m/f, Cuba: shy person
- f, Cuba: a style of folk song, original from Cuba, which talks about rural life
The song is full of rural references: “my life is light green and bright jasmine, my life is a wounded stag seeking refuge in the forest…”
Why is it a classic? Hell dunnow, but at least the words to Guantanamera make sense, unlike La Bamba!
La Bamba makes perfect sense to me. The singer is a sailor who no longer sails. He has taken to the land yet yearns for the sea. And then everybody dances with grace and style.
O.K., I don’t know what the dancing has to do with the former sea captian but, it kinda makes sense.
Oh and since we’re discussing Spanish folk songs, I must mention my abuela’s version of Cieltio Lindo. The real lyrics are:
Ay ay ay ay, canta y no llores
Porque cantodao se allegran, Ciellito lino
Los corazones
Which my admittedly poor translation skills tells me means:
Oh, oh oh oh sing and don’t cry
Because singing makes the heart happy, pretty Cielito
My grandmother sticks in this verse:
Si a tu puerta llega Cielito lindo un perro flaco
Tratela con carino, Cielito lindo
que es tu retato
Which, according to me again, translates to:
If pretty Cielito comes to your door
as lovely as a skinny dog
Treat her with kindness because
She’s your spitting image.
Much funnier in Spanish, I must say.
Na, he’s still a mere sailor… but, depending on who you ask, he tries to pass for a captain so the girl will dance with him or being with the gal makes him feel like the most starred-up admiral in the fleet.
And the verse about the ladder likes her room to heaven, but still - the verses themselves (in the Spanish original) do make sense. Neither the Valens version (the one I usually get asked to translate, and then I have to explain that it’s not really in Spanish) nor the chorus do.
I know a verse for Cielito Lindo that’s related to that one; there’s similar ones in many other songs from the late XIX and early XX centuries:
Si a tu ventana llega,
Cielito lindo,
una paloma,
trátala con cariño,
Cielito lindo,
que es mi persona.
If a dove (beautiful heaven of mine) reaches your window, treat her with love, for she is me {meaning, “she’s from me”, “she’s my messenger”}.
Oh, and that dog is male 
Likening the girl to a skinny dog may actually be a compliment (I’ve seen references to a woman being “like a poised greyhound”), but likening her to a skinny bitch would have gotten the singer tarred and then the tar pulled off.