The music of Cuba, including its instruments, performance, and dance, comprises a large set of unique traditions influenced mostly by west African and European music. Due to the syncretic nature of most of its genres, Cuban music is often considered one of the richest and most influential regional music in the world. For instance, the son cubano merges an adapted Spanish guitar (tres), melody, harmony, and lyrical traditions with Afro-Cuban percussion and rhythms. Almost nothing remains of the original native traditions, since the native population was exterminated in the 16th century.
Olga Guillot was a Cuban singer who was known as the "queen of bolero." She was a native of the Cuban city of Santiago de Cuba.
Lena Burke, also known as Lena Pérez or simply Lena is a Cuban singer-songwriter.
Rosalía León Oviedo is a Mexican actress, singer, songwriter and guitarist. She participated in the Mexican musical reality show La Academia. She released her first album through Sony Music in 2003 selling over 50,000 copies in the first four weeks.
Doris Magaly Ruiz Lastres is a Cuban musician and composer. Her compositions have been performed at a number of international music festivals.
Elena Burke was a revered and popular Cuban singer of boleros and romantic ballads.
Juan Pablo Villar Alemán is a Cuban artist specializing in drawing, painting, engraving and graphic design. Since 1989, he resides in Mexico City, Mexico.
José Manuel Villa Castillo is a Cuban artist.
Trova[ˈt̪ɾoβa] is a style of Cuban popular music originating in the 19th century. Trova was created by itinerant musicians known as trovadores who travelled around Cuba's Oriente province, especially Santiago de Cuba, and earned their living by singing and playing the guitar. According to nueva trova musician Noel Nicola, Cuban trovadors sang original songs or songs written by contemporaries, accompanied themselves on guitar, and aimed to feature music that had a poetic sensibility. This definition fits best the singers of boleros, and less well the Afrocubans singing funky sones or even guaguancós and abakuá. It rules out, perhaps unfairly, singers who accompanied themselves on the piano.
Rita Aurelia Fulcida Montaner y Facenda, known as Rita Montaner, was a Cuban singer, pianist and actress. In Cuban parlance, she was a vedette, and was well known in Mexico City, Paris, Miami and New York, where she performed, filmed and recorded on numerous occasions. She was one of Cuba's most popular artists between the late 1920s and 1950s, renowned as Rita de Cuba. Though classically trained as a soprano for zarzuelas, her mark was made as a singer of Afro-Cuban salon songs including "The Peanut Vendor" and "Siboney".
Josignacio is a Contemporary Cuban Artist, who first emerged in the controversial, "La Generacion de los 80s" - The 80s Generation of Contemporary Cuban Art also referred to as New Cuban Art.
Olga de Blanck y Martín was a Cuban pianist, guitarist and composer. She was born in Havana, the daughter of Hubert de Blanck and Pilar Martín.
Guadalupe Pineda is a Mexican singer considered one of Mexico's grassroots musical icons. She is a recipient of the Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a multi-Latin Grammy nominee, she has released more than 30 albums during her career covering various styles of music with sales over 10 million copies worldwide. In 1984, she recorded her breakthrough hit "Yolanda", also known as "Te Amo", composed by Pablo Milanes, selling more than 1.5 million copies. She primarily sings in Spanish but has also sung in French, Italian, English, and Hebrew. She has been called the “Queen of Bolero”, but has also sung ballads, mariachi, tango, ranchera, and opera. Pineda has performed all over Mexico and in various countries in Europe and the Americas. She's been worthy of innumerable recognition, awards, and special mentions from the critics, proving through 45 years of career that quality and purity of music are not opposed to the popular approval.
Luis Manuel Molina de Varona is a Cuban musician, concert guitarist, composer, arranger, musical director, broadcaster and radio producer.
Wilma Alba Cal is a Cuban composer of contemporary classical music. Her work has been recognized in several competitions in Cuba organized by National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), Instituto Superior de Arte, Asociación Hermanos Saíz and Instituto Cubano de la Música. Her catalog includes chamber, choir, electroacoustic and orchestral music, in addition to soundtracks for theatre and audiovisual works.
"Contigo En La Distancia" is a bolero which was written by the Cuban singer-songwriter César Portillo de la Luz when he was 24 years old. It was written in the year 1946.
Silvina Fabars is a Cuban folk dancer and ballerina who is the principal dancer of the National Folkloric Ensemble of Cuba and a noted folk dance instructor throughout Latin America and Europe. She has won numerous awards and recognition throughout her career including the Vanguardia Nacional, the Distinción por la Cultura Nacional, and the Alejo Carpentier Medal. In 2014, she was honored as the recipient of the National Dance Prize of Cuba.
Aymée Regla Nuviola Suárez, better known as Aymée Nuviola, is a Cuban singer, pianist, composer and actress, nicknamed "La Sonera del Mundo". She is also known for having played Celia Cruz in the Colombian telenovela Celia.
Ana Andrea Cairo Ballester was a Cuban writer, researcher, and professor of literature and philology.
María Teresa Freyre de Andrade was a Cuban librarian and information scientist, the founder of the national public library system in Cuba, and a pioneer of modern Cuban librarianship. She was the first director of the José Martí National Library in Havana, having been appointed by Fidel Castro after the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Freyre de Andrade envisioned a model of the biblioteca popular, a “popular library,” which, in contrast to a public library where “the book stands still on its shelf waiting for the reader to come searching for it,” would be “eminently active” in finding its readers.
