Omara Portuondo

OMARA PORTUONDO Aged 95 years the Cuban Icon won the LATIN GRAMMY AWARDS 2023 for her album VIDA released in May 2023 Omara is one of Cuba’s greatest vocalists and has been very popular from the day she started singing professionally in the late forties. From 1950 through the late 1960s, she was Cuba’s top performer of songs in the filin style (the word is taken from the English word feeling, and describes music inspired by the performances of Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, and Glenn Miller, among others). At the height of her popularity, Portuondo sang with a number of different groups, always with great success. She was born in Cayo Hueso (Havana) in 1930 and started her professional career at the Cabaret Tropicana in Havana in 1930, and in the 1950's she began her international career backing Nat King Cole. In 1997, at the age of 67, Omara became The Diva of Buena Vista Social Club, crowning her fame after half a century of a huge national and international solo career. Omara won her first Latin Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Tropical Album along with a Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. She received three Grammy Award nominations in 2019, 2021 and in 2024, Omara was awarded with the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sports, in a ceremony presided over by the King and Queen of Spain, and then she won the prestigious Songlines Pioneer Award for her life long contribution to Cuban music and culture.