Grammy-winning balladeer favored Castro’s revolution
HAVANA — Pablo Milanes, the Latin Grammy-winning balladeer who helped found Cuba’s “nueva trova” movement and toured the world as a cultural ambassador for Fidel Castro’s revolution, has died in Spain, where he had been under treatment for blood cancer. He was 79.
One of the most internationally famous 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) during a career that lasted more than five decades.
“The culture in Cuba is in mourning for the death of Pablo Milanes,” Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz tweeted Monday night.
Milanes’ representatives issued a statement saying he had died early Tuesday in Madrid.
In early November, he announced he was being hospitalized and canceled concerts.
Milanes was born Feb. 24, 1943, in the eastern city of Bayamo, in what was then Oriente province, the youngest of five siblings born to working-class parents. His musical career began with him singing in, and often winning, local TV and radio contests.
His family moved to the capital and he studied for a time at the Havana Musical Conservatory during the 1950s, but he credited neighborhood musicians rather than formal training for his early inspiration, along with trends from the United States and other countries.
In the early ’60s he was in several groups including Cuarteto del Rey (the King’s Quartet), composing his first song in 1963: “Tu Mi Desengano,” (You, My Disillusion), which spoke of moving on from a lost 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 song “Yolanda,” which is still an enduring favorite everywhere from Old Havana’s tourist cafes to Mexico City cantinas.
Spanish newspaper El Pais asked Milanes
in 2003 how many women he had flirted with by saying they inspired the song. “None,” he responded, laughing. “But many have told me: ‘My child is the product of ‘Yolanda.’ ”
Milanes supported the 1959 Cuban Revolution but was nevertheless targeted by authorities during the early years of Castro’s government, when all manner of “alternative” expression was highly suspect. Milanes was reportedly harassed for wearing his hair in an afro, and was given compulsory work detail for his interest in foreign music.
Those experiences did not dampen his revolutionary fervor, however, and he began to incorporate politics into his songwriting, collaborating with musicians such as Silvio Rodriguez and Noel Nicola.
The three are considered the founders of the Cuban nueva trova, a usually guitarbased musical style tracing to the ballads that troubadours composed during the island’s wars of independence. Infused with the spirit of 1960s U.S. protest songs, the nueva trova uses musical storytelling to highlight social problems.
Milanes was friendly with Castro, critical of U.S. foreign policy and for a time even a member of the communist government’s parliament.
“I am a worker who labors with songs, doing in my own way what I know best, like any other Cuban worker,” Milanes once said, according to The New York Times. “I am faithful to my reality, to my revolution and the way in which I have been brought up.”