His followers all through Latin America knew him merely as Pablito. Identified for such hits as Yolanda and Yo Me Quedo, Pablo Milanés helped outline Nueva Trova, the style of music that emerged in Cuba within the Nineteen Seventies.
Milanés died in Madrid. He moved to Spain a number of years in the past to obtain therapy for most cancers. The Latin Grammy winner’s loss of life was introduced on his Fb web page:
“With nice ache and disappointment, we remorse to report that Maestro Pablo Milanés has handed away this early morning on November 22 in Madrid. We deeply recognize all of the reveals of affection and help, to all his household and mates, on this very troublesome time. Might he relaxation within the love and peace he all the time transcended. He’ll stay perpetually in our reminiscence.”
In a 2019 interview along with his daughter Haydée Milanés, NPR’s Alt-Latino described Pablo as “one of the crucial revered singer-songwriters to emerge from a heady interval when politics, poetry and acoustic guitars flowed from Cuba within the type of nueva trova, or new track.”
Pablo Milanés had an advanced relationship with the Cuban authorities over the a long time. He supported Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution however he was additionally a free thinker. Within the mid-Sixties, he was despatched to the Castro regime’s compelled labor camps referred to as Navy Units of Manufacturing Assist (UMAP) the place, in line with El Pais, “monks, homosexuals and different ‘delinquent parts’ had been interned below the pretext of obligatory navy service.”
“It was a focus camp and I spent a yr and a half of my life there,” Milanés instructed The Guardian in 1999. “It wasn’t that there was any bodily punishment, it was the actual fact you had been shut away, with onerous bodily labor, reducing sugar cane daybreak to nightfall.” He stated he wasn’t precisely positive why he was despatched there. “I used to be dwelling a bohemian life-style. . . who is aware of, the entire perspective of youth on the time.”
Cuban chief Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez tweeted that Milanés and his songs are an “inseparable voice of the soundtrack of our era.”
Earlier this yr, Milanes introduced that he had signed the Cuban Civil Society Manifesto calling for social and financial adjustments to the nation. In a Fb put up, he urged others to learn the doc and to make method for brand new methods of considering, “which declare new legal guidelines, new freedoms, new energetic participation inside in the present day’s society, which might lead us to a dialogue of peace.”
Among the many many tributes from fellow artists, Peruvian singer Tania Libertad wrote, “An excellent composer, fantastic singer and extraordinary buddy…We’ll miss you Pricey Pablo. Have a superb journey. I’ll hug you and sing to you all the time.”
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