Western New Yorkers know the axiom: There’s always a Buffalo connection.
Of course it’s not always the case, but it’s also less of an exaggeration than you might think.
Take the Mexican national anthem, for instance.
It was written by a Spanish composer who lived here for 40 years and was buried in Forest Lawn. His gravesite remains, but his body lies in a place of honor in Mexico.
That’s why a team of Spanish filmmakers is traveling to Buffalo to work on a Spanish-language film about Jaime Nunó’s life and legacy in Buffalo. A visit to Nunó’s gravesite is planned.
“Jaime Nunó’s four decades in Buffalo represent a vital but forgotten chapter of both his personal story and Western New York’s Hispanic heritage,” said Casimiro D. Rodriguez Sr., president and founder of the Hispanic Heritage Council of Western New York.
Rodriguez will participate in a panel discussion and presentation hosted by the council titled “The Forgotten Trunks of Jaime Nunó” at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Buffalo History Museum. The panelists will explore Nunó’s life in Buffalo, and a film trailer and historical images related to Nunó’s life as a music director and vocal instructor in Buffalo will be unveiled. The filmmakers will offer a behind-the-scenes look at the documentary’s research and production process.
The event, which is free and open to the public, is one of many activities commemorating National Hispanic Heritage Month in Buffalo, which concludes Wednesday .
“We are honored … to bring this transnational story to light, celebrating Nunó’s extraordinary legacy right here, where he lived and composed,” Rodriguez said. “Hispanics have been part of the history of Western New York since the late 1800s.”
Census data from 1880 shows 16 residents of Buffalo had immigrated from Spain, as well as three each from Mexico, South America and Central America along with four from Cuba. Today, 35,643 Hispanic or Latino residents live in the city, which represents about 13% of Buffalo’s total population.
Nunó was born in 1824 in the Catalonia region of Spain. Trained in the Catholic church as a singer, organist and choir director, he studied in Naples, Italy − then returned home to oversee military bands in the Town of Terrassa, near Barcelona.
He was a “little guy, probably about 5 feet tall or 5 feet, 2 inches,” said Jean Dickson, historian and retired librarian at the University at Buffalo.
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In Terrassa, Nunó met his first wife, Dolores, who was his older, widowed landlady. They had one child, a daughter, Dickson said.
It was also in Terrassa that Nunó befriended the mayor of Barcelona, whose brother was the governor of Cuba, then a Spanish colony. That’s how Nunó wound up in Cuba, according to Cristian Canton-Ferrer, who co-wrote a Spanish-language book about Nunó.
In Cuba, Nunó met Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna − best known for his role in the Battle of the Alamo − who invited Nunó to Mexico. While there in the 1850s, Nunó ran military bands and entered a contest Santa Anna held in 1854 to write music for a Mexican national anthem. Nunó won the competition. The music accompanies lyrics by Francisco Gonzalez Bocanegra.
After Santa Anna was overthrown in 1855, Nunó emigrated to the United States and worked with opera companies and conducted the concerts of piano virtuoso Sigismund Thalberg in New York City. Nunó moved to Buffalo in 1869 after having toured all around the world.
“He worked in Spain, Cuba and Mexico and then he toured all over the United States with an opera singer named Felicita Vestvali,” said Dickson, one of the panelists for Tuesday’s event at the museum.
In Buffalo, Nunó organized children’s festivals and choirs, founded choirs and even led a male choir, known as the Nunós, for the city’s Protestant elite.
By then a widower, Nunó married Catherine Remington in 1874. Remington was one of his voice students and 30 years his junior. They lived on Delaware Avenue and had two children, Dickson said.
But Nunó’s fortunes slipped. By 1901, he had a studio on Delaware Avenue, but he and his family were living in a boarding house.
Then came the Pan-American Exposition of 1901 held in Buffalo. For the Mexican delegation, organizers brought in musicians from a regiment band and an orchestra. Some of them heard Nunó was living in Buffalo somewhere on Delaware Avenue. They didn’t have the address, but they did find a small plaque on Nunó’s studio.
“They couldn’t believe it was the same guy,” Dickson said, adding the musicians could not coax Nunó to come outside. “He said things like, ‘Oh, that was a long time ago’ and sort of pushed them away.”
Eventually musicians marched back and forth in front of Nunó’s studio, playing the Mexican national anthem until he came out.
After that, Nunó was invited to tour Mexico and was celebrated, becoming a national hero in Mexico history. He died in 1908 and was buried in Forest Lawn. In 1942, his remains were moved to Mexico and placed in the Rotunda of Illustrious Men in Mexico City that honors prominent Mexicans in culture, art, military and politics, including artist Diego Rivera and Nobel laureate Octavio Paz.
Nunó likely would have been happy to be remembered in America as well as in Mexico.
Interviewed by The Buffalo Evening News near the end of his life, Nunó said, “I feel all the richer for having two countries to love instead of one.”
In addition to Dickson and Rodriguez, WGRZ anchor Pete Gallivan and the producers of the Nunó documentary, Raul Cortes and Beatriz Fenner, are the panelists for Tuesday’s event at the museum.
By Deidre Williams
News Staff Reporter
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