Cuban singer-songwriter Pablo Milanés dies at 79
10 min read
By Associated Press
HAVANA: Pablo Milanés, the Latin Grammy-winning balladeer who helped discovered Cuba’s “nueva trova” motion and toured the world as a cultural ambassador for Fidel Castro’s revolution, has died in Spain, the place he had been underneath remedy for blood most cancers. He was 79.
One of probably the most internationally well-known Cuban singer-songwriters, he recorded dozens of albums and hits like “Yolanda,” “Yo Me Quedo” (I’m Staying) and “Amo Esta Isla” (I Love This Island) throughout a profession that lasted greater than 5 many years.
“The culture in Cuba is in mourning for the death of Pablo Milanes,” Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz tweeted Monday evening.
Milanés’ representatives issued a press release saying he had died early Tuesday in Madrid. In early November, he introduced he was being hospitalized and canceled live shows.
Pablo Milanés was born Feb. 24, 1943, within the japanese metropolis of Bayamo, in what was then Oriente province, the youngest of 5 siblings born to working-class dad and mom. His musical profession started with him singing in, and infrequently successful, native TV and radio contests.
His household moved to the capital and he studied for a time on the Havana Musical Conservatory in the course of the Fifties, however he credited neighborhood musicians moderately than formal coaching for his early inspiration, together with traits from the United States and different nations.
In the early ’60s he was in a number of teams together with Cuarteto del Rey (the King’s Quartet), composing his first music in 1963: “Tu Mi Desengano,” (You, My Disillusion), which spoke of transferring on from a misplaced love.
“Your kisses don’t matter to me because I have a new love/to whom I promise you I will give my life,” the tune goes.
In 1970 he wrote the seminal Latin American love music “Yolanda,” which remains to be a permanent favourite in all places from Old Havana’s vacationer cafes to Mexico City cantinas.
Spanish newspaper El Pais requested Milanés in 2003 what number of girls he had flirted with by saying they impressed the music. “None,” he responded, laughing. “But many have told me: ‘My child is the product of ‘Yolanda.‘”
Milanés supported the 1959 Cuban Revolution however was nonetheless focused by authorities in the course of the early years of Fidel Castro’s authorities, when all method of “alternative” expression was extremely suspect. Milanés was reportedly harassed for carrying his hair in an afro, and was given obligatory work element for his curiosity in international music.
Those experiences didn’t dampen his revolutionary fervor, nonetheless, and he started to include politics into his songwriting, collaborating with musicians similar to Silvio Rodríguez and Noel Nicola.
The three are thought of the founders of the Cuban “nueva trova,” a often guitar-based musical type tracing to the ballads that troubadours composed in the course of the island’s wars of independence. Infused with the spirit of Nineteen Sixties American protest songs, the nueva trova makes use of musical storytelling to spotlight social issues.
Milanés and Rodríguez specifically grew to become shut, touring the world’s levels as cultural ambassadors for the Cuban Revolution, and bonding throughout boozy periods.
“If Silvio Rodríguez and I got together, the rum was always there,” Milanés instructed El Pais in 2003. “We were always three, not two.”
Milanés was pleasant with Castro, crucial of U.S. international coverage and for a time even a member of the communist authorities’s parliament. He thought of himself loyal to the revolution and spoke of his satisfaction at serving Cuba.
“I am a worker who labors with songs, doing in my own way what I know best, like any other Cuban worker,” Milanés as soon as mentioned, based on The New York Times. “I am faithful to my reality, to my revolution and the way in which I have been brought up.”
In 1973, Milanés recorded “Versos Sencillos,” which turned poems by Cuban Independence hero José Martí into songs. Another composition grew to become a type of rallying name for the political left of the Americas: “Song for Latin American Unity,” which praised Castro because the inheritor of Martí and South American liberation hero Simon Bolívar, and solid the Cuban Revolution as a mannequin for different nations.
In 2006, when Castro stepped down as president as a result of a life-threatening sickness, Milanés joined different distinguished artists and intellectuals in voicing their help for the federal government. He promised to symbolize Castro and Cuba “as this moment deserves: with unity and courage in the presence of any threat or provocation.”
Yet he was unafraid to talk his thoughts and sometimes advocated publicly for extra freedom on the island.
In 2010 he backed a dissident starvation striker who was demanding the discharge of political prisoners. Cuba’s getting old leaders “are stuck in time,” Milanés instructed Spanish newspaper El Mundo. “History should advance with new ideas and new men.”
The following 12 months, because the island was enacting financial modifications that may permit higher free-market exercise, he lobbied for President Raul Castro to do extra. “These freedoms have been seen in small doses, and we hope that with time they will grow,” Milanés instructed The Associated Press.
Milanés disagreed with out dissenting, prodded with out pushing, hewing to Fidel Castro’s infamous 1961 warning to Cuba’s mental class: “Within the Revolution, everything; outside the Revolution, nothing.”
“I disagree with many things in Cuba, and everyone knows it,” Milanés as soon as mentioned.
Ever political even when his bushy afro had given approach to extra conservatively trimmed, grey, thinning locks, in 2006 he contributed the music “Exodo” (Exodus), about lacking buddies who’ve departed for different lands, to the album “Somos Americans” (We Are Americans), a compilation of U.S. and Latin American artists’ songs about immigration.
Rodríguez and Milanés had a falling out within the Eighties for causes that have been unclear and have been barely on talking phrases, although they maintained a mutual respect and Rodríguez collaborated musically with Milanés’ daughter.
Milanés sang within the 1980′s album “Amo esta isla” that “I am from the Caribbean and could never walk on terra firma;” nonetheless, he divided most of his time between Spain and Mexico in later years.
By his personal depend he underwent greater than 20 leg surgical procedures.
Milanés received two Latin Grammys in 2006 — greatest singer-songwriter album for “Como un Campo de Maiz” (Like a Cornfield) and greatest conventional tropical album for “AM/PM, Lineas Paralelas” (AM/PM, Parallel strains), a collaboration with Puerto Rican salsa singer Andy Montanez.
He additionally received quite a few Cuban honors together with the Alejo Carpentier medal in 1982 and the National Music Prize in 2005, and the 2007 Haydee Santamaria medal from the Casa de las Americas for his contributions to Latin American tradition.
HAVANA: Pablo Milanés, the Latin Grammy-winning balladeer who helped discovered Cuba’s “nueva trova” motion and toured the world as a cultural ambassador for Fidel Castro’s revolution, has died in Spain, the place he had been underneath remedy for blood most cancers. He was 79.
One of probably the most internationally well-known Cuban singer-songwriters, he recorded dozens of albums and hits like “Yolanda,” “Yo Me Quedo” (I’m Staying) and “Amo Esta Isla” (I Love This Island) throughout a profession that lasted greater than 5 many years.
“The culture in Cuba is in mourning for the death of Pablo Milanes,” Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz tweeted Monday evening.
Milanés’ representatives issued a press release saying he had died early Tuesday in Madrid. In early November, he introduced he was being hospitalized and canceled live shows.
Pablo Milanés was born Feb. 24, 1943, within the japanese metropolis of Bayamo, in what was then Oriente province, the youngest of 5 siblings born to working-class dad and mom. His musical profession started with him singing in, and infrequently successful, native TV and radio contests.
His household moved to the capital and he studied for a time on the Havana Musical Conservatory in the course of the Fifties, however he credited neighborhood musicians moderately than formal coaching for his early inspiration, together with traits from the United States and different nations.
In the early ’60s he was in a number of teams together with Cuarteto del Rey (the King’s Quartet), composing his first music in 1963: “Tu Mi Desengano,” (You, My Disillusion), which spoke of transferring on from a misplaced love.
“Your kisses don’t matter to me because I have a new love/to whom I promise you I will give my life,” the tune goes.
In 1970 he wrote the seminal Latin American love music “Yolanda,” which remains to be a permanent favourite in all places from Old Havana’s vacationer cafes to Mexico City cantinas.
Spanish newspaper El Pais requested Milanés in 2003 what number of girls he had flirted with by saying they impressed the music. “None,” he responded, laughing. “But many have told me: ‘My child is the product of ‘Yolanda.‘”
Milanés supported the 1959 Cuban Revolution however was nonetheless focused by authorities in the course of the early years of Fidel Castro’s authorities, when all method of “alternative” expression was extremely suspect. Milanés was reportedly harassed for carrying his hair in an afro, and was given obligatory work element for his curiosity in international music.
Those experiences didn’t dampen his revolutionary fervor, nonetheless, and he started to include politics into his songwriting, collaborating with musicians similar to Silvio Rodríguez and Noel Nicola.
The three are thought of the founders of the Cuban “nueva trova,” a often guitar-based musical type tracing to the ballads that troubadours composed in the course of the island’s wars of independence. Infused with the spirit of Nineteen Sixties American protest songs, the nueva trova makes use of musical storytelling to spotlight social issues.
Milanés and Rodríguez specifically grew to become shut, touring the world’s levels as cultural ambassadors for the Cuban Revolution, and bonding throughout boozy periods.
“If Silvio Rodríguez and I got together, the rum was always there,” Milanés instructed El Pais in 2003. “We were always three, not two.”
Milanés was pleasant with Castro, crucial of U.S. international coverage and for a time even a member of the communist authorities’s parliament. He thought of himself loyal to the revolution and spoke of his satisfaction at serving Cuba.
“I am a worker who labors with songs, doing in my own way what I know best, like any other Cuban worker,” Milanés as soon as mentioned, based on The New York Times. “I am faithful to my reality, to my revolution and the way in which I have been brought up.”
In 1973, Milanés recorded “Versos Sencillos,” which turned poems by Cuban Independence hero José Martí into songs. Another composition grew to become a type of rallying name for the political left of the Americas: “Song for Latin American Unity,” which praised Castro because the inheritor of Martí and South American liberation hero Simon Bolívar, and solid the Cuban Revolution as a mannequin for different nations.
In 2006, when Castro stepped down as president as a result of a life-threatening sickness, Milanés joined different distinguished artists and intellectuals in voicing their help for the federal government. He promised to symbolize Castro and Cuba “as this moment deserves: with unity and courage in the presence of any threat or provocation.”
Yet he was unafraid to talk his thoughts and sometimes advocated publicly for extra freedom on the island.
In 2010 he backed a dissident starvation striker who was demanding the discharge of political prisoners. Cuba’s getting old leaders “are stuck in time,” Milanés instructed Spanish newspaper El Mundo. “History should advance with new ideas and new men.”
The following 12 months, because the island was enacting financial modifications that may permit higher free-market exercise, he lobbied for President Raul Castro to do extra. “These freedoms have been seen in small doses, and we hope that with time they will grow,” Milanés instructed The Associated Press.
Milanés disagreed with out dissenting, prodded with out pushing, hewing to Fidel Castro’s infamous 1961 warning to Cuba’s mental class: “Within the Revolution, everything; outside the Revolution, nothing.”
“I disagree with many things in Cuba, and everyone knows it,” Milanés as soon as mentioned.
Ever political even when his bushy afro had given approach to extra conservatively trimmed, grey, thinning locks, in 2006 he contributed the music “Exodo” (Exodus), about lacking buddies who’ve departed for different lands, to the album “Somos Americans” (We Are Americans), a compilation of U.S. and Latin American artists’ songs about immigration.
Rodríguez and Milanés had a falling out within the Eighties for causes that have been unclear and have been barely on talking phrases, although they maintained a mutual respect and Rodríguez collaborated musically with Milanés’ daughter.
Milanés sang within the 1980′s album “Amo esta isla” that “I am from the Caribbean and could never walk on terra firma;” nonetheless, he divided most of his time between Spain and Mexico in later years.
By his personal depend he underwent greater than 20 leg surgical procedures.
Milanés received two Latin Grammys in 2006 — greatest singer-songwriter album for “Como un Campo de Maiz” (Like a Cornfield) and greatest conventional tropical album for “AM/PM, Lineas Paralelas” (AM/PM, Parallel strains), a collaboration with Puerto Rican salsa singer Andy Montanez.
He additionally received quite a few Cuban honors together with the Alejo Carpentier medal in 1982 and the National Music Prize in 2005, and the 2007 Haydee Santamaria medal from the Casa de las Americas for his contributions to Latin American tradition.
