of Saigon in 1975 and remains popular with Vietnamese. History Origins In Cuba, the bolero was perhaps the first great Cuban musical and vocal synthesis to win universal recognition. In time, this dance music spread to other countries, leaving behind what Ed Morales has called the "most popular lyric tradition in Latin America." The Cuban bolero tradition originated in Santiago de Cuba in the last quarter of the 19th century; it does not owe its origin to the Spanish music and song of the same name. In the 19th century there grew up in Santiago de Cuba a group of itinerant musicians who moved around earning their living by singing and playing the guitar. Pepe Sanchez is known as the father of the trova style and the creator of the Cuban bolero. Untrained, but with remarkable natural talent, he composed numbers in his head and never wrote them down. As a result, most of these numbers are now lost, but two dozen or so survive because friends and students wrote them down. He was the model and teacher for the great trovadores who followed. Spread in Latin America The bolero first spread from the east of Cuba to the Dominican Republic in the year 1895, thanks to trovador Sindo Garay, who had previously brought the criolla "La Dorila" to Cuba, giving rise to a lasting interchange of lyrical styles between both islands. In the early 20th century the bolero reached Puerto Rico and Mexico, where it was popularized by the first radio stations around 1915. In Mexico, the genre became an essential component of the thriving trova yucateca movement in Yucatán alongside other Cuban forms such as the clave. It leading exponent was Guty Cárdenas. By the 1930s, when Trío Matamoros made famous their mix of bolero and son cubano known as bolero-son, the genre was a staple of the musical repertoire of most Latin American countries. In Spain, Cuban bolero was incorporated into the copla repertoire with added elements from Andalusian music, giving rise to the so-called bolero moruno, made famous by composers such as Carmelo Larrea and Quintero, León y Quiroga. Some of the bolero's leading composers have come from nearby countries, as in the case of the prolific Puerto Rican composer Rafael Hernández and the Mexican composers: Agustín Lara and María Grever. Some Cuban composers of the bolero are primarily considered trovadores. Several lyric tenors also contributed