Las Mañanitas

The story

"Las Mañanitas" is a Mexican birthday song, described as traditional and credited to the Mexican composer Alfonso Esparza Oteo. In Mexico it is usually sung early in the morning to wake the person whose birthday it is, and it belongs especially to the custom of serenading women. When it is sung rather than played from a recording, singers often put the name of the person greeted into the song, stretching a short name across two notes and running a longer or double name together to fit the music. Some regions sing their own variants of the opening stanza. It is usually set in A major, in 3/4 time for the first two stanzas, then in 6/8 for the rest.

The song has also been sung on film: Pedro Infante sings a well-known rendition of it to "Chachita" in the film Nosotros los pobres, and it is sung in English in The Leopard Man (1943).

Every year, on the eve of 12 December, Mexico's most famous artists sing mañanitas in honour of Our Lady of Guadalupe at her basilica. In New Mexico it is sometimes sung at birthday celebrations, for men and women alike: at a concert for Al Hurricane's 75th birthday, Al Hurricane Jr. and Christian Sanchez sang it beside the English-language "Happy Birthday to You", and the concert was released as an album mastered by Lorenzo Antonio.

In Ponce, Puerto Rico, Las Mañanitas is an annual celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe: a pre-dawn parade and a Catholic Mass, followed by a free breakfast that the city government offers at the historic Ponce City Hall. It began in 1964, and its origin is uncertain: some credit Mexican engineers who had settled there, others Spaniards from Extremadura. More than 10,000 people attend, among them mayors and other prominent figures.

What it says

A morning serenade of greeting and good wishes for someone's birthday. Its mood is warm and joyful.

The words

The words of this song are still in copyright, so they are not printed here. “What it says” above gives their theme in our own words.