"America" is a song from the 1957 musical West Side Story. Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics and Leonard Bernstein composed the music.
In the original stage version, Anita – the girlfriend of Bernardo, the leader of the Sharks, and the most important female character after Maria – praises America while a fellow Puerto Rican, Rosalia, supports Puerto Rico.[1] This version of the song deprecates the island and highlights the positive qualities of American life ("I'll drive a Buick through San Juan/If there's a road you can drive on"). The irony of this supposedly pro-American number, however, is its vibrantly Hispanic musical style, with Latin percussion, complex cross-rhythm and Spanish guitar.
In the 1961 film version, Anita, played by Rita Moreno, still sings in favor of the United States while Bernardo, played by George Chakiris, replies with corresponding criticisms of America and American ethnic prejudice, especially against Puerto Ricans ("Life is alright in America/If you're all White in America"). Some of the original song's disparagement was removed. In 2004, this version finished at No. 35 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema.
The 2021 film version of the song, sung by Ariana DeBose as Anita, David Alvarez as Bernardo, Ana Isabelle as Rosalia and Ilda Mason as Luz, is a hybrid of both the stage and 1961 film versions, except now taking place the morning after the dance at the gym, and in the streets of the Puerto Rican community's area of the city.[2] This film's version of the song was nominated for Best Scene at the 2021 St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Awards and for Best Musical Moment at the 2022 MTV Movie & TV Awards.[3]
The song employs a mixed meter:
The alternating bars of 6
8 (six eighth-notes in two groups of three) with 3
4 (three quarter-notes) (similar to a guajira) is a distinctive characteristic of the song. This rhythm has been called both a hemiola and a habanera but is not really either. The two bar types alternate and are not superposed, as in a hemiola. The alternation is comparable with the "Habanera" from "Carmen", but "America" lacks the distinctive characteristic underlying rhythm of the habanera form.
Stephen Sondheim claims that Bernstein returned from a holiday in Puerto Rico and told him he had come across a wonderful dance rhythm called Huapango which gave him the idea for the song. Many years later, a friend of Sondheim's found, in a box of Bernstein's papers, an unproduced ballet called Conch Town which contained the tune. Sondheim concludes that Bernstein had invented the story of finding the rhythm on holiday simply so he could reuse an old tune.[4]
The composer's tempo instruction is "Tempo di Huapango".
{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
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