Quizás, Quizás, Quizás: the Cuban bolero of endless maybe

Written by Cuban songwriter Osvaldo Farrés in 1947, Quizás, Quizás, Quizás became one of the most durable Spanish-language boleros. The title means Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps, and its repeated answer gives the song a simple dramatic setup: one person asks for certainty, while the other keeps delaying with the same evasive word.

The Spanish lyric is built from that small refusal. The narrator asks when, how, and where love will finally be answered, but every question returns to quizás. Joe Davis later wrote the English lyric Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps, keeping the same central idea while making the phrase easy to travel through Anglo-American popular song.

Nat King Cole's 1958 recording on Cole Español gave the song one of its most recognizable international versions. Later performances by Buena Vista Social Club, Doris Day, Cake, Andrea Bocelli with Jennifer Lopez, and many others kept the song moving between bolero, jazz-pop, lounge music, film, and television. Its use in Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love also helped fix the song as a sound of elegance, hesitation, and unresolved desire.

Listen to Buena Vista Social Club perform Quizás, Quizás live at Carnegie Hall:

From a compositional standpoint, Quizás, Quizás, Quizás uses a compact but elegant tonal design. In a simplified reading of the Buena Vista Social Club version, the verse is centred in G minor, combining the Aeolian mode with the harmonic minor scale through the major dominant seventh chord D⁷. In the harmonic analysis of the song's chord chains, the scale degrees, denoted with Roman numerals, show the following progressions:

The verse is built around repeated dominant-to-tonic motion, with the major dominant D⁷ pulling toward the minor tonic Gm. The final line begins more subtly, using the half-diminished supertonic Am⁷b⁵ before the harmony turns into G major, where the refrain unfolds.

The refrain keeps the major-mode harmony just as clear, repeatedly shaping the phrase through the familiar ii–V–I motion. This shift from minor-key questioning to major-key release mirrors the lyric's suspended answer: the music opens the space, but the word quizás keeps certainty just out of reach.

For those intrigued by songs that move between minor and major tonal areas, consider exploring the following articles: