Sobre las Olas

Piano sheet music for the piece (Germany)

The waltz "Sobre las Olas" (or "Over the Waves") is the best-known work of Mexican composer Juventino Rosas (1868–1894). It "remains one of the most famous Latin American pieces worldwide", according to the "Latin America" article in The Oxford Companion to Music.^[1]

It was first published by Rosas in 1888.^[2] It remains popular as a classic waltz, and has also found its way into New Orleans Jazz and Tejano music.

The song remains popular with country and old-time fiddlers in the United States.

Film

A Mexican film titled Sobre las olas was released in 1933.^[3]

The Mexican film biography of Juventino Rosas, released in 1950 and starring Pedro Infante, is entitled Sobra las Olas (Over the Waves).^[4]

In popular culture

• In the United States, Sobre las Olas has a cultural association with funfairs, and trapeze artists, as it was one of the tunes available for Wurlitzer's popular line of fairground organs.
• The music for Over the Waves was used for the song The Loveliest Night of the Year, which was sung by Ann Blyth in MGM's film The Great Caruso.
• The composition is featured in the film Stage Fright (1950).
• The song appears along with Entry of the Gladiators, as a medley, in the Circus tribe stages in Lemmings 2: The Tribes.
• The song plays while riding a balloon in the Atari 2600 game, Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns.
• This waltz is performed in the James Bond movie, Octopussy, in the scene in the Circus in Germany.
• On Sesame Street, Ernie often sang a song to this melody, called George Washington Bridge.
• The tune is featured in the RKO Radio Pictures feature When's Your Birthday? (1937) starring Joe E. Brown.
• In the 1946 Warner Brothers cartoon, Daffy Doodles, Daffy sings Sobre las Olas to the tune of "She was an acrobat's daughter..."
• Sobre las Olas can be heard in the score of Disney's 1944 film The Three Caballeros during "The Cold-Blooded Penguin" segment.
• The song has also been used in Popeye cartoons.
• An homage to this song appears as the bridge of The Dead Kennedys' track "Chemical Warfare," which appears on their 1980 album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables.
• In a Disney movie, Mary Poppins, Bert hums to this song while pretending to be a tightrope walker.
• On Barney and Friends episode, "Classical Cleanup", Mr. Boyd plays this song on the piano while Baby Bop dances and accidentally makes a mess in the classroom.
• This is one of the songs featured in the video game Wii Music.
• The waltz is used as background music in Sega's 1980 arcade game Carnival (video game).
• An homage to this song appears in the bridge of the song "Drowning In Berlin" by the British new wave group The Mobiles at approximately 2:06
• The song appears on the Woody Woodpecker cartoon Niagara Fools.
• The composition can be heard as accompanying music during one of the circus scenes in Laurel and Hardy's film The Chimp (1932).

References

1. The Oxford Companion to Music (1 rev ed.) (2012) ISBN 9780199579037
2. Helmut Brenner (2000) "Juventino Rosas: His Life, His Work, His Time", Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies in Music Vol.32, J. Bunker Clark Ed., Harmonie Park Press, Warren, Michigan.
3. Sobre las olas (1933) at the Internet Movie Database
4. Sobre las olas/Over the Waves (1950) at the Internet Movie Database

External links

• Sobre las Olas: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
• Sobre las Olas: Mexican Music from Nineteenth-Century New Orleans. Louisiana Digital Library.
• Sheet music for "Sobre Las Olas", F. Trifet & Co., 1895.