He was the bard of the Caribbean, with a voice as smooth and rich as 20-year-old rum
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskBorn in Bayamo in Oriente, the heartland of Fidel Castro’s revolution, the young Mr Milanés soon got into trouble with the new authorities. He was sent to do military service in one of Castro’s work camps for “anti-socials”, escaped, and was imprisoned again before eventually finding a niche in the government’s arts institute.
His voice was melodious, as smooth and rich as 20-year-old rum. He was a musician of rare versatility, a guitarist, pianist, singer and composer who released 50 albums. His influences ranged from baroque and renaissance music to Afro-Cuban rhythms ,and the pre-revolutionary sounds that would find renewed fame in the Buena Vista Social Club. Early on he set to music verse by Cuban poets such as Nicolás Guillén.
In “Yo pisaré las calles nuevamente/de lo que fue Santiago ensangrentada” he mourned the coup against Salvador Allende in Chile and those who died at the hands of General Augusto Pinochet. But it will be his love songs that will last. They are lyrical but taut, carnal, bittersweet, of loss as much as rapture. In “Para vivir” he urges his lover to abandon a relationship that “lacks flesh and desire too”.
Political disillusion crept into his work like a melancholy Havana morning. In “Días de Gloria” , “I live with ghosts who feed [us] dreams and false promises.” He was critical of the survival of Stalinism in Cuba, of the lack of rights and freedoms, of the lack of reform. He thought, correctly as it turned out, that the regime’s rapprochement with the United States under Barack Obama would not lead to much.
Cuba’s ruling communist bureaucrats began to criticise Mr Milanés as a “counter-revolutionary”, but they feared him. He was far bigger than they were. Over the past year, on what became a farewell tour, he performed in both Havana and Miami, one of the few Cuban artists applauded in both places. His death comes as the country sinks ever deeper into demoralisation. Over the past 12 months more than 200,000 Cubans have been stopped trying to enter the United States.
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