Sobre las Olas

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]

Piano sheet music cover(Germany)

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

Recordings

• Chet Atkins, on Alone
• The Beach Boys, on "I'm Going Your Way" (released with the title "Carnival (Over the Waves)")[3]
• Roy Clark, on The Lightning Fingers of Roy Clark
• Willie Nelson, on Red Headed Stranger
• Mark O'Connor on American Classics

Film

A Mexican film titled Sobre las olas was released in 1933.[4]

The Mexican film biography of Juventino Rosas, released in 1950 and starring Pedro Infante, is entitled Sobre las olas (Over the Waves).[5]

In popular culture

• In the United States, Sobre las olas has a cultural association with circuses, 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 films Stage Fright (1950) and Sunset Boulevard (1950 film).
• The song appears along with "Entrance 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, as well as its sequel, Super Pitfall.
• 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.
• A parody of this song is used 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 & 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.
• 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).
• The melody appears as a bridge between the verses of "Waltzing with Bears" which is one of the songs on the album Minneapolis Concert by Ann Mayo Muir, Ed Trickett and Gordon Bok.[6]
• The song is played during a sequence at an amusement park in the 1971 film Harold and Maude.
• The song appears in the Woody Allen movie Irrational Man (2015).

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. Beach Boys, 2019, Carnival (Over The Waves), YouTube, published 26 December 2019, viewed 14 January 2020.
4. Sobre las olas (1933) on IMDb
5. Sobre las olas/Over the Waves (1950) on IMDb
6. "Waltzing with Bears" on YouTube

External links

• Sobre las olas: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
• Sobre las Olas: Mexican Music from Nineteenth-Century New Orleans. Louisiana Digital Library.
• Sheet music for "Over the Waves", F. Trifet & Co., 1895.
• Vienna Orchestra (1904), A Hullamokon, Keringo (Over the Waves Waltz), Internet Archive, Columbia, retrieved 2017-12-29