Pablo Milanes

Pablo Milanés Arias (Bayamo, February 24, 1943 - Madrid, November 22, 2022) was a Cuban singer-songwriter and musician, one of the founders —along with Silvio Rodríguez and Noel Nicola—from the Nueva Trova Cubana.

Biography

He was born in Bayamo, Oriente province, present-day Granma province, Cuba. He studied music at the Havana Municipal Conservatory.

In its beginnings he was greatly influenced by traditional Cuban music and by feeling ('sentimiento', in English). The feeling is a musical style that began in Cuba in the 1940s and represented a new way of approaching the song, where the feeling defined the interpretation and was influenced by the American currents of the romantic song and of jazz. The feeling was accompanied by a guitar, in the style of the old troubadours but enriched by jazz harmonizations. This is how this new form of communication or "feeling" with the audience.

In 1964 he joined the Los Bucaneros quartet as an interpreter, with whom he collaborated on their first works. He also tried his luck as an occasional soloist, thus diversifying his experiences that would later lead him to solo work. In 1965 he published Mis 22 años , considered by many to be the link between feeling and Nueva Trova Cubana, including new musical and vocal elements that would be precursors of the music Cuban that would come later.

Around 1966 he was sent by the authorities to a forced labor camp of the Military Production Aid Unit (UMAP) in the Camagüey area, in the center of the island. After escaping to Havana to denounce the injustices committed in what in 2015 he called "a Stalinist concentration camp" he was imprisoned for two months in La Cabaña and then sent to a punishment camp, where he remained until the dissolution of the UMAP, at the end of 1967. In In an interview in 2015, he commented that he still hopes that the Cuban government will apologize for what he suffered at that time.

Under the influence of the First International Meeting of Protest Songs, held in Varadero in 1967, he began to create songs with a political content. In 1968 he offered his first concert with Silvio Rodríguez at the Casa de las Américas. This would be the first sample of what later, in 1972, would emerge as the popular musical movement of Nueva Trova. In that same place she would meet members of the cultural and musical elite from other American countries with whom she shared his social concerns. Violeta Parra, Mercedes Sosa, Daniel Viglietti, Chico Buarque, Simone, Vinícius de Moraes, Milton Nascimento, Víctor Jara among many others, passed through the Casa de las Américas at that time.

As a composer, he has played various styles, including the Cuban son and the protest song at the end of the 70s. He belonged to the Sound Experimentation Group and has composed songs for the movies. Through GESICAIC, along with other prominent Cuban musicians, including Silvio Rodríguez, he participated in a creative workshop where young Cuban film talents were trained by teaching them the best of Cuban music, which would later be reflected in a generation of filmmakers who fused music and film perfection. This stage, which spans from the late sixties to the mid-seventies, and is full of songs by the artist: Yo no te pido, Los años mozos, Cuba goes, I saw it today, Yolanda, Don't ask me, The roads, Poor singer, Man, you're growing up, I'll step on the streets again, and others.

At the beginning of the 80s, he formed his own group, with the collaboration of several friends who were with him at the GESICAIC. This stage is characterized by the richness of the musical resources used and by the variety of intermixed genres, although its contents continue to have a strong social background.

An important album in his career was the titled Dear Pablo, a tribute album recorded with some of his great friends, and in which people such as Víctor Manuel and Ana Belén, Luis Eduardo Aute and Mercedes Sosa, among many others. This record had a sequel in 2002, which was entitled Pablo Querido. Seventeen years later, a good handful of artists meet again to sing to the sound of Pablo Milanés. On this occasion, in addition to his "classic" friends, new pop music artists join, such as Fher (the singer of the Mexican rock group Maná), Marco Antonio Muñiz or Armando Manzanero. He participated in the documentary Van Van, the party started (2001).

In 2005 he composed a part of the soundtrack of the film Siempre Habana directed by Ángel Peláez. Among his many songs, the following are especially famous: Yolanda, Yo me quedo, Amo a esta isla y El breve espacio en que you're not here, To live on and How much I won, how much I lost.

Numerous artists have collaborated with him, including Silvio Rodríguez, Ana Belén, Fito Páez, Ricardo Arjona, Maná, Luís Represas, Joaquín Sabina, Caco Senante, Ismael Serrano, Joan Manuel Serrat, Los Van Van, Carlos Varela, Lilia Vera, Víctor Manuel or Javier Ruibal.

During the last years he lived between Havana, Madrid, Mazaricos, and Vigo.

Political stance

As a defender of the Cuban Revolution, he was characterized by maintaining a position of public criticism of the errors that, in his opinion, have been committed in the leadership of the country.

In March 2010, when asked about Guillermo Fariñas' hunger strike, he replied: “We must condemn from a human point of view. These things are not done. Ideas are discussed and fought against, not imprisoned». In the same interview, he advocated for a change in Cuba, keeping the Castros but "with arrangements."

In recent years, he has become one of the figures in the world of Cuban music who has most criticized the Cuban regime and its repression against dissidents.

Death

He died at the Clínica Universidad de Navarra in Madrid, in the early morning of November 22, 2022, due to myelodysplastic syndrome, a type of cancer that decreases the immune response.

Discography

His discography includes more than 40 solo albums, to which must be added fifteen works with the ICAIC Sound Experimentation Group (GESI), plus his large number of works on collective albums and collaborations with other artists.

As a solo artist

With GESI (ICAIC Sound Experimentation Group)

Groups

Collaborations

Awards and distinctions

Venice International Film Festival

National Music Award of Cuba