On January 20, 2020, Omara Portuondo took the stage at the National Theater of Cuba to celebrate her 90th birthday with a concert where the feeling of farewell prevailed. However, among the iconic songs he made his own, such as Goodbye happiness, I’m Cuban, What I have left to liveand with the accompaniment of pianist Roberto Fonseca and his orchestra – it was the closing of the 35th Jazz Plaza festival – the performer sent a thought to the audience. “What a beautiful night! I hope we have more magical nights like this. If we have such a good time, we can have more. Right?” the artist asked, to which he responded with an effusive “Yes!” from the public. That will be his last solo recital, in Cuba, four years before his definitive retirement from the stage, forced by his delicate state of health.
In Cuba, amidst the daily deficiencies and difficulties, people have always found in Omara’s music and voice one of their regenerating balms and part of the soundtrack of their best moments. Musical excellence, high interpretative skills, versatility and histrionics on stage are some of the elements that characterize the legacy of one of the most imposing and overwhelming voices of Cuban music, whose sound has effortlessly crossed genres such as the song, the bolero, the son, the filin – which owes its name to the English word sensationalluding to the feeling- and set guidelines that served as a guide for younger artists. Havana Omara Portuondo, “Filin’s girlfriend”, the diva of the Buena Vista Social Club has just celebrated 95 years of life with which a good part of the musical history of the Caribbean island can be told.
Listening to this legend is like traveling in times of constant experimentation and musical and cultural revolution, when in Cuba the voices of Portuondo, Elena Burke (Señora Sentimiento), Moraima Secada converged, while in the United States other Cuban audiences appreciated Celia Cruz, Olga Guillot or La Lupe. Each of them shined with their own style, personality and sensitivity in interpreting the song. But time – Pablo Milanés already said – is relentless. At 95, Omara Portuondo is the last great diva of Cuban music and she must be vindicated especially in these times when the term “diva” is so used by budding producers and artists that they barely have a name. hit like a footprint.
Having definitively retired from the stage two years ago, when her health conditions already made it unbearable for the artist to face an entire concert and the demands of the stage, Omara Portuondo spends her days with her family in Havana. He goes to some tributes to receive the public’s affection, as happened last Sunday at the Zócalo in Mexico City, in a dance party; Depending on his environment, the artist records songs and collaborations on some occasions: his most recent album, Eternally Omara (Warner Music, 2025), and continues to sing in intimacy, something that fills her with life.
Known as “the fiancée of the filin” for her high ability to interpret that type of song, long before being part of the international phenomenon Buena Vista Social Club, she has a career spanning more than seventy years and an enormous discography that attests to a fertile body of work. “Omara is the most important living Cuban singer, because she accumulates the history of music in herself,” says producer and musicologist Élsida González.
The specialist, who deeply knows the work of Portuondo, with whom she has collaborated on several occasions, remembers her debut album, Black magic (1960), where he “made it clear that he was an artist with unlimited vocal qualities and an extraordinary sense of harmony”. In fact, she says, they even called her Omara Brown at one point, when she was translating North American standards into Spanish.
González remembers working with the singer on “an unusual album” that they recorded in the studios of the Musical Recording and Publishing Company (EGREM) in Havana. “He wanted to leave his voice linked to artists with whom he had never been able to sing in his life”, underlines the specialist on the germ of my wisheswhere Omara gives her voice to existing recordings. “We had songs by María Teresa Vera, Celina González, Carlos Puebla, Nat King Cole, Miguelito Cuní recorded, up to 21 songs, divided into two volumes, where you can hear her singing as if she had done a real duet with Barbarito Diez, with Bola de Nieve. There Omara revealed herself and was very creative.”
In a discography composed of more than 30 materials, González prefers to highlight the diva’s work – awarded for musical excellence by the Latin Recording Academy 2019 – with Chucho Valdés, on piano and vocals. “We listened to an Omara with such enormous maturity that I have the feeling that from then on what we could hear from her were school records, to teach singing, not only for the technical question, but for how the emotion is controlled, contained, overflowing”.
And of course Buena Vista Social Club (World Circuit, 1997). That plethora of extraordinary exponents of traditional Cuban music. There, among Elíades Ochoa, Compay Segundo, Rubén González, Ibrahim Ferrer and other essential elements, Omara, the only woman of that crew-, now established, became the eternal diva of the Buena Vista Social Club performing classics such as twenty years AND Silence. Integrate that format all the stars This only deepened the perception of Portuondo as a legend of Cuban music, even beyond the island’s borders, as his music reached countries such as the United States, Spain and Japan.
“A unique way of interpreting and feeling”
“Omara has a unique way of interpreting and feeling,” says the tireless Cuban pianist Rolando Luna. He, together with other young performers, began his journey in professional music at the age of 15, with the help of Omara Portuondo, in the band that accompanied the artist in his downloads in Havana and, subsequently, in national and international tours. Luna does not forget the famous peña that Filin’s girlfriend drank at the Café Cantante of the National Theater of Cuba, every Friday, for several years. “Omara has never sung me a song the same way,” says the musician, who treasures dozens of moments on piano and voice with the performer, as well as accompanying her in different formats, recordings, tours – such as the one made with Diego The shrimp– or the years in which he was part of the last stage of the Buena Vista Social Club project.
Her legacy as an actress was already so vast and indisputable that when Omara was asked in the last decade if she wanted to retire, she put on a funny face and said she would die singing on stage. After that 2020 concert, the nonageria artist continued with tours abroad and some appearances at other musicians’ concerts on the island. News appeared from time to time of “one last concert”, of “a farewell tour”, but there was always another performance. Until that concert at the Palau de la Música in Barcelona in which the diva had to be taken away from the stage, after appearing clearly disoriented at the beginning of the presentation with the Failde Orchestra. Yet, despite the controversy, they held another concert, in Budapest. So yes, Omara announced her definitive retirement from the scene, in October 2024.
The public who appreciated her in her latest performances debated their thrill between the admiration for listening to the artist, who still possesses her touch, and the evidence of the advanced age of the human being. Élsida González prefers not to place the blame on any close friend or member of her team. “I’m sure Omara always wants to do what she knows how to do: sing. Seeing her still, at 95, performing in her own way is a huge blessing.”
For lovers of Filin’s girlfriend’s work, like Amalia Fuentes, a young 30-year-old Cuban, who says she grew up aware of who Omara Portuondo was listening to her music, when she heard the news of the accident at that concert in Barcelona she was not surprised. “We already knew it wasn’t right,” he says, alluding to the last times he saw the artist live. “The ending wasn’t the best and, as an audience, we wonder if it was really worth it for her to deal with such urgent situations,” reflects Fuentes, who feels privileged to have listened to Omara, even in her final years.
Faced with the inexorable passage of time, there is the certainty of an already immortal voice, perpetuated in records and recordings, which is part of Cuba’s popular culture and the preference of thousands of people around the world. The Buena Vista diva already sang it: “What I have left to live is only the time/That you can dedicate to our happiness”. What a joy it is to know that your voice exists, Omara Portuondo.
