El Madrugador Lyrics in English by Omara Portuondo

This is a love song to Cuba itself, sung by someone up at dawn (el madrugador is the early riser). It opens on "Que lindo es el suelo mío / Bajo el azulado cielo" (how lovely is my land under the bluish sky), with a little stream murmuring beside the bohío, the thatched hut of the Cuban countryside. The sun lights up the orchard and breaks the usual quiet of the meadow, and the singer hears a tonada, a simple country tune, as a "signo de libertad" (sign of freedom).

Then it gets literary. The singer says "yo siempre me acordaré de los versos" (I will always remember the verses) of a poet called "el Cucalambé". That is the pen name of Juan Cristóbal Nápoles Fajardo, a nineteenth-century Cuban poet famous for the décima, the ten-line verse of Cuban country song. There is a nod to "la doctrina martiana" too, meaning the ideas of José Martí, Cuba's national hero. And the finish is a proud, repeated "Cubana, yo sí soy cubana" (Cuban, yes, I really am Cuban). That little sí is emphatic: it means "I truly am", not "if".