Omara Portuondo
Biography
Singer Omara Portuondo had already been at the heart of Cuban music for years when, aged 66, she was asked to sing a track on the Buena Vista Social Club album in 1996. She couldn’t have known that this one track would reignite her career for another two decades, prompting the release of half a dozen albums andinternational touring.
Omara Portuondo was born in Havana in October 1930, one of three children. She remembers her parents singing in the kitchen as her first singing lessons. When her older sister, Haydée, became a dancer at the famous Tropicana cabaret, Omara soon followed, albeit by accident. One day in 1945, a dancer dropped out two days before an important premiere. Omara had watched her sister rehearse so often that she knew all the steps and was asked to stand in.
In the early 1950s Omara performed in the all-female Orquesta Anacaona. But she and Haydée became known for singing the popular, sentimental music called filin (from the English word ‘feeling’), a mixture of Cuban music, Brazilian bossa nova and jazz. In 1952 they formed a female vocal quartet with Elena Bourke and Moraima Secada, led by the pianist Aida Diestro. The Cuarteto Las D’Aida became one of the most renowned groups of the day and Omara performed with them for 15 years. The original line-up made one album for RCA Victor in 1957. “We toured America and Aida’s vocal arrangements were very innovative. We were acclaimed everywhere and when Nat King Cole played the Tropicana we sang on stage with him,” Omara remembers.
She was with Las D’Aida in Miami when the Cuban missile crisis took place in October 1962 and they had to return home. She continued with Las D’Aida until 1967 when she left to pursue her solo career. “So many singers had gone into exile that there was a gap to be filled,” she says. She’d already recorded her solo debut Magia Negra (Black Magic) in 1959.
The Seventies found her singing with the top charanga outfit Orquesta Aragón and touring widely. She recorded with Adalberto Alvarez in 1984 and made two albums, Palabras and Desafíos (with pianist Chucho Valdés) for the Spanish label Nubenegra in the early Nineties.
In 1996, Omara was the only woman involved in the legendary Buena Vista Social Club recording. She was invited to sing a bolero and chose ‘Veinte años’ (Twenty Years), which she sang with Compay Segundo and it became one of the highlights of the album. In Wim Wender’s Buena Vista film there’s an emotional high-point as she sings ‘Silencio’ with Ibrahim Ferrer. As with the other musicians, it was the beginning of a late-flowering second career.
In 2000 World Circuit released Buena Vista Social Club presents Omara Portuondo, an album which finally placed her seasoned voice centre stage. Omara had a dream backing band including Buena Vista musicians Rubén González, ‘Cachaíto’ López, ‘Guajiro’ Mirabal, and featured guest appearances from Eliades Ochoa, Compay Segundo, Manuel Galbán and Ibrahim Ferrer.
The second World Circuit solo album, Flor de Amor (Flower of Love), came in 2004. Recorded once again in Havana’s EGREM studios, Nick Gold was joined by renowned Brazilian producer Alê Siqueira (Carlinhos Brown, Caetano Veloso, Tribalistas) and Demetrio Muñiz. Omara had had a love of Brazilian music since her youth and the seven-string guitar of Swami Jr. brings a distinctive Brazilian flavour along with regular Cuban collaborators Papi Oviedo on tres and Manuel Galbán on electric guitar. The album received a Grammy nomination.
Her Brazilian moves continued with a recording with Brazilian singer Maria Bethânia (on Biscoito Fino), 2008, and Gracias (on World Village), 2008, produced by Alê Siqueira and Swami Jr. This collection of hand-picked songs looking back over a career of 60 years involves some fine musicians including Roberto Fonseca (who had slipped into Rubén González’ seat at the piano on Buena Vista tours), Avishai Cohen and Trilok Gurtu, as well as special guests Chico Buarque, Chucho Valdés and Pablo Milanés.
In 2015 she revisited her first album, Magia Negra, from 1959, with a small group of select musicians. There was another album, Omara Siempre, in 2018 and she took the material on what she called her ‘Final Kiss’ tour in 2019. “Music is my life,” she said, “I’m gonna do this until I die.”
BIOGRAPHY
Singer Omara Portuondo had already been at the heart of Cuban music for years when, aged 66, she was asked to sing a track on the Buena Vista Social Club album in 1996. She couldn’t have known that this one track would reignite her career for another two decades, prompting the release of half a dozen albums andinternational touring.
Omara Portuondo was born in Havana in October 1930, one of three children. She remembers her parents singing in the kitchen as her first singing lessons. When her older sister, Haydée, became a dancer at the famous Tropicana cabaret, Omara soon followed, albeit by accident. One day in 1945, a dancer dropped out two days before an important premiere. Omara had watched her sister rehearse so often that she knew all the steps and was asked to stand in.
In the early 1950s Omara performed in the all-female Orquesta Anacaona. But she and Haydée became known for singing the popular, sentimental music called filin (from the English word ‘feeling’), a mixture of Cuban music, Brazilian bossa nova and jazz. In 1952 they formed a female vocal quartet with Elena Bourke and Moraima Secada, led by the pianist Aida Diestro. The Cuarteto Las D’Aida became one of the most renowned groups of the day and Omara performed with them for 15 years. The original line-up made one album for RCA Victor in 1957. “We toured America and Aida’s vocal arrangements were very innovative. We were acclaimed everywhere and when Nat King Cole played the Tropicana we sang on stage with him,” Omara remembers.
She was with Las D’Aida in Miami when the Cuban missile crisis took place in October 1962 and they had to return home. She continued with Las D’Aida until 1967 when she left to pursue her solo career. “So many singers had gone into exile that there was a gap to be filled,” she says. She’d already recorded her solo debut Magia Negra (Black Magic) in 1959.
The Seventies found her singing with the top charanga outfit Orquesta Aragón and touring widely. She recorded with Adalberto Alvarez in 1984 and made two albums, Palabras and Desafíos (with pianist Chucho Valdés) for the Spanish label Nubenegra in the early Nineties.
In 1996, Omara was the only woman involved in the legendary Buena Vista Social Club recording. She was invited to sing a bolero and chose ‘Veinte años’ (Twenty Years), which she sang with Compay Segundo and it became one of the highlights of the album. In Wim Wender’s Buena Vista film there’s an emotional high-point as she sings ‘Silencio’ with Ibrahim Ferrer. As with the other musicians, it was the beginning of a late-flowering second career.
In 2000 World Circuit released Buena Vista Social Club presents Omara Portuondo, an album which finally placed her seasoned voice centre stage. Omara had a dream backing band including Buena Vista musicians Rubén González, ‘Cachaíto’ López, ‘Guajiro’ Mirabal, and featured guest appearances from Eliades Ochoa, Compay Segundo, Manuel Galbán and Ibrahim Ferrer.
The second World Circuit solo album, Flor de Amor (Flower of Love), came in 2004. Recorded once again in Havana’s EGREM studios, Nick Gold was joined by renowned Brazilian producer Alê Siqueira (Carlinhos Brown, Caetano Veloso, Tribalistas) and Demetrio Muñiz. Omara had had a love of Brazilian music since her youth and the seven-string guitar of Swami Jr. brings a distinctive Brazilian flavour along with regular Cuban collaborators Papi Oviedo on tres and Manuel Galbán on electric guitar. The album received a Grammy nomination.
Her Brazilian moves continued with a recording with Brazilian singer Maria Bethânia (on Biscoito Fino), 2008, and Gracias (on World Village), 2008, produced by Alê Siqueira and Swami Jr. This collection of hand-picked songs looking back over a career of 60 years involves some fine musicians including Roberto Fonseca (who had slipped into Rubén González’ seat at the piano on Buena Vista tours), Avishai Cohen and Trilok Gurtu, as well as special guests Chico Buarque, Chucho Valdés and Pablo Milanés.
In 2015 she revisited her first album, Magia Negra, from 1959, with a small group of select musicians. There was another album, Omara Siempre, in 2018 and she took the material on what she called her ‘Final Kiss’ tour in 2019. “Music is my life,” she said, “I’m gonna do this until I die.”