Valencia (song)
Encyclopedia
Valencia is a pasodoble
Pasodoble
Pasodoble is a typical dance from Spain march-like musical style as well as the corresponding dance style danced by a couple. It is the type of music typically played in bullfights during the bullfighters' entrance to the ring or during the passes just before the kill...

song composed by José Padilla for the 1924 Zarzuela
Zarzuela
Zarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance...

 La bien amada and included in the 1926 silent film Valencia
Valencia (film)
Valencia, also known as The Love Song, is a 1926 romance film directed by Dimitri Buchowetzki, who came over from Paramount to direct, and starring Mae Murray and featuring Boris Karloff in an uncredited role. Rumors of a surviving print persist. The film was a box office hit and the title song,...

, with lyrics translated by Lucien Boyer, Jacques Charles
Jacques Charles
Jacques Alexandre César Charles was a French inventor, scientist, mathematician, and balloonist.Charles and the Robert brothers launched the world's first hydrogen-filled balloon in August 1783, then in December 1783, Charles and his co-pilot Nicolas-Louis Robert ascended to a height of about...

, and Clifford Grey
Clifford Grey
Clifford Grey was an English songwriter, actor, librettist and Olympic medalist. His birth name was Percival Davis, and he was also known as Clifford Gray, Tippi Gray, Tippi Grey, Tippy Gray and Tippy Grey.As a writer, Grey contributed prolifically to West End and Broadway shows, as librettist and...

. Recorded by Paul Whiteman
Paul Whiteman
Paul Samuel Whiteman was an American bandleader and orchestral director.Leader of the most popular dance bands in the United States during the 1920s, Whiteman's recordings were immensely successful, and press notices often referred to him as the "King of Jazz"...

 & his Orchestra, it became one of the biggest hits of 1926, topping the charts for 11-weeks beginning March 30, 1926.

Tony Martin
Tony Martin (entertainer)
Tony Martin is an American actor and singer.-Career:Tony Martin was born on Christmas Day, 1913 as Alvin Morris in San Francisco, California to Jewish immigrant parents. He received a saxophone as a gift from his grandmother at the age of ten. In his grammar school glee club, he became an...

 recorded the song in 1950, and his cover reached #18 on the U.S. chart.

Influences on literature

In the novel The Invention of Morel
The Invention of Morel
La invención de Morel — translated as The Invention of Morel or Morel's Invention — is a science fiction novel by Adolfo Bioy Casares. It was Bioy Casares' breakthrough effort, for which he won the 1941 First Municipal Prize for Literature of the City of Buenos Aires...

, the argentinian writer Adolfo Bioy Casares
Adolfo Bioy Casares
Adolfo Bioy Casares was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel.-Biography:Adolfo Bioy...

 often quotes to this song, together with Tea for two
Tea for Two
Tea for Two can refer to:*Tea for Two , a 1925 popular song by Vincent Youmans and Irving Caesar, introduced in the musical, No, No, Nanette*Tea for Two , a movie starring Doris Day which reintroduced the song...

.

The main character is alone, in a wild island, when he starts to hear this unexpected music.
In the plot the song stands for the lightheartedness of the high society, that somehow violates the wild space of a lonely island, were the main character is literally "struggling for survival".

One can argue that Bioy Casares chose this song mainly because it was a strong symbol to represent the society of the 40's.

The saxophonist Pablo in Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf
Steppenwolf (novel)
Steppenwolf is the tenth novel by German-Swiss author Hermann Hesse. Originally published in Germany in 1927, it was first translated into English in 1929. Combining autobiographical and psychoanalytic elements, the novel was named after the lonesome wolf of the steppes...

mentions this song as an example of melodies quietly reproduced every night by dreamy people.
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