Pablo Milanés, 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, has died in Spain, the place he had been beneath remedy for blood most cancers. He was 79.

One of the vital internationally well-known Cuban singer-songwriters, he recorded dozens of albums and hits like “Yolanda,” “Yo Me Quedo” (I’m Staying) and “Amo Esta Isla” (I Love This Island) throughout a profession that lasted greater than 5 a long time.

“The tradition in Cuba is in mourning for the dying of Pablo Milanés,” Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz tweeted.

Milanés’ representatives stated he died early Tuesday in Madrid. In early November, he introduced he was being hospitalized and canceled concert events.

Pablo Milanés was born Feb. 24, 1943, within the jap Cuban metropolis of Bayamo, the youngest of 5 siblings born to working-class mother and father. His musical profession started with him singing in, and infrequently successful, native TV and radio contests.

His household moved to Havana, the place he studied on the Havana Musical Conservatory in the course of the Fifties, however he credited neighborhood musicians moderately than formal coaching for his early inspiration, together with traits from the US and different nations.

Within the early ’60s he was in a number of teams together with Cuarteto del Rey (the King’s Quartet), composing his first tune in 1963: “Tu Mi Desengano,” (You, My Disillusion), which spoke of shifting on from a misplaced love.

In 1970 he wrote the seminal Latin American love tune “Yolanda,” which continues to be an everlasting favourite from Outdated Havana’s vacationer cafes to Mexico Metropolis cantinas.

Milanés supported the 1959 Cuban Revolution however was however focused by authorities in the course of the early years of Fidel Castro’s authorities, when all method of “various” expression was extremely suspect. Milanés was reportedly harassed for carrying his hair in an afro, and was given obligatory work element for his curiosity in overseas music.

These experiences didn’t dampen his revolutionary fervor, nonetheless, and he started to include politics into his songwriting, collaborating with musicians reminiscent of Silvio Rodríguez and Noel Nicola.

The three are thought-about the founders of the Cuban “nueva trova,” a sometimes guitar-based musical type tracing to the ballads that troubadours composed in the course of the island’s wars of independence. Infused with the spirit of Sixties American protest songs, the nueva trova makes use of musical storytelling to focus on social issues.

Milanés and Rodríguez particularly turned shut, touring the world’s phases as cultural ambassadors for the Cuban Revolution, and bonding throughout boozy classes.

“If Silvio Rodríguez and I received collectively, the rum was all the time there,” Milanés instructed El Pais in 2003. “We had been all the time three, not two.”

Milanés was pleasant with Castro and demanding of U.S. overseas coverage, and even served as a member of the communist authorities’s parliament. He thought-about himself loyal to the revolution and spoke of his pleasure at serving Cuba.

“I’m a employee who labors with songs, doing in my very own means what I do know finest, like some other Cuban employee,” Milanés as soon as instructed the New York Occasions. “I’m trustworthy to my actuality, to my revolution and the best way by which I’ve been introduced up.”

In 1973, Milanés recorded “Versos Sencillos,” which turned poems by Cuban Independence hero José Martí into songs. One other composition turned a rallying name for the political left of the Americas: “Track for Latin American Unity,” which praised Castro because the inheritor of Martí and South American liberation hero Simon Bolívar, and solid the Cuban Revolution as a mannequin for different nations.

In 2006, when Castro stepped down as president attributable to a life-threatening sickness, Milanés joined different outstanding artists and intellectuals in voicing their assist for the federal government. He promised to characterize Castro and Cuba “as this second deserves: with unity and braveness within the presence of any risk or provocation.”

But he was unafraid to talk his thoughts and sometimes advocated publicly for extra freedom on the island.

In 2010 he backed a dissident starvation striker who was demanding the discharge of political prisoners. Cuba’s growing older leaders “are caught in time,” Milanés instructed Spanish newspaper El Mundo. “Historical past ought to advance with new concepts and new males.”

The next yr, because the island was enacting financial adjustments that will permit larger free-market exercise, he lobbied for President Raul Castro to do much more. “These freedoms have been seen in small doses, and we hope that with time they’ll develop,” Milanés instructed the Related Press.

Milanés disagreed with out dissenting, prodded with out pushing, hewing to Fidel Castro’s infamous 1961 warning to Cuba’s mental class: “Inside the Revolution, every thing; exterior the Revolution, nothing.”

“I disagree with many issues in Cuba, and everybody is aware of it,” Milanés as soon as stated.

Ever political even when his bushy afro had given solution to extra conservatively trimmed, grey, thinning locks, in 2006 he contributed the tune “Exodo” (Exodus), about lacking mates who’ve departed for different lands, to the album “Somos Individuals” (We Are Individuals), a compilation of U.S. and Latin American artists’ songs about immigration.

Rodríguez and Milanés had a falling out within the Eighties for causes that had been unclear and had been barely on talking phrases, although they maintained a mutual respect and Rodríguez collaborated musically with Milanés’ daughter.

Milanés received two Latin Grammys in 2006 — finest singer-songwriter album for “Como un Campo de Maiz” (Like a Cornfield) and finest conventional tropical album for “AM/PM, Lineas Paralelas” (AM/PM, Parallel strains), a collaboration with Puerto Rican salsa singer Andy Montanez.

He additionally received quite a few Cuban honors together with the Alejo Carpentier medal in 1982 and the Nationwide Music Prize in 2005, and the 2007 Haydee Santamaria medal from the Casa de las Americas for his contributions to Latin American tradition.