Cuban singer Pablo Milanes performs on the Ciudad Deportiva Coliseo in Havana, Cuba, on June 21, 2022. Milanes, the Latin Grammy-winning balladeer who helped discovered Cuba’s “nueva trova” motion and toured the world as a cultural ambassador for Fidel Castro’s revolution, died early Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2022, in Spain, the place he had been beneath remedy for blood most cancers.

Yamil Lage/AFP by way of Getty Pictures

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Yamil Lage/AFP by way of Getty Pictures

Cuban singer Pablo Milanes performs on the Ciudad Deportiva Coliseo in Havana, Cuba, on June 21, 2022. Milanes, the Latin Grammy-winning balladeer who helped discovered Cuba’s “nueva trova” motion and toured the world as a cultural ambassador for Fidel Castro’s revolution, died early Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2022, in Spain, the place he had been beneath remedy for blood most cancers.

Yamil Lage/AFP by way of Getty Pictures

His followers all through Latin America knew him merely as Pablito. Recognized 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 Seventies.

Milanés died in Madrid. He moved to Spain a number of years in the past to obtain remedy for most cancers. The Latin Grammy winner’s dying 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 respect all of the reveals of affection and assist, to all his household and pals, on this very troublesome time. Could he relaxation within the love and peace he all the time transcended. He’ll stay without end in our reminiscence.”

In a 2019 interview along with his daughter Haydée Milanés, NPR’s Alt-Latino described Pablo as “some of the 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 music.”

Pablo Milanés (proper) and his daughter Haydée Milanés carry out collectively on the Kennedy Heart.

Jati Lindsay/Kennedy Heart

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Jati Lindsay/Kennedy Heart

Pablo Milanés (proper) and his daughter Haydée Milanés carry out collectively on the Kennedy Heart.

Jati Lindsay/Kennedy Heart

Pablo Milanés had a sophisticated relationship with the Cuban authorities over the many years. 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 pressured labor camps referred to as Army Items of Manufacturing Assist (UMAP) the place, in line with El Pais, “clergymen, homosexuals and different ‘delinquent parts’ have been interned beneath the pretext of obligatory navy service.”

“It was a focus camp and I spent a 12 months 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 have been shut away, with laborious bodily labor, reducing sugar cane daybreak to nightfall.” He mentioned he wasn’t precisely positive why he was despatched there. “I used to be dwelling a bohemian way of life. . . 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 technology.”

Earlier this 12 months, Milanes introduced that he had signed the Cuban Civil Society Manifesto calling for social and financial modifications to the nation. In a Fb publish, he urged others to learn the doc and to make manner for brand spanking new methods of considering, “which declare new legal guidelines, new freedoms, new energetic participation inside at present’s society, which might lead us to a dialogue of peace.”

Among the many many tributes from fellow artists, Peruvian singer Tania Libertad wrote, “A terrific composer, great singer and extraordinary pal…We are going to miss you Pricey Pablo. Have a superb journey. I’ll hug you and sing to you all the time.”