MUSIC

Society for the Performing Arts (SPA), bringing the world’s best to Houston, presents Omara Portuondo, The Diva from Buena Vista Social Club - 80th Birthday Concert, 8 pm, Friday, October 8, 2010, in Jones Hall as part of the SPA International Series.

Next to hand-rolled cigars and arguably the world’s best rum, Cuba is admired for its tantalizing, hip-swaying music. And it’sOmara Portuondo, the island’s musical sweetheart for more than half a century, whose passionate and moving voice helped send this music pulsating beyond Cuba’s shores. She danced and sang at the famed Tropicana Club and even performed with Nat King Cole.

As the only female member of the Buena Vista Social Club, Portuondo transcended the landmark album and film with two Grammy Award nominated records of her own, all the while enchanting audiences around the globe with her effervescence and timeless charm.

The story of the life of Omara Portuondo (Havana, 1930) reads like something out of a film script. The daughter of a well-to-do family and a mother of Spanish descent, she relinquished everything to marry a handsome black member of the Cuban national baseball team – a fact that she kept secret since mixed marriages were frowned upon in Cuba at that time – Omara?s first encounter with music was at a very early age.

Just as in any other Cuban home, the future singer and her siblings grew up with the songs which her parents, for lack of a gramophone, sang to them. Those melodies, some of which still form part of her repertoire, were young Omara?s informal introduction to the world of music.

However, before taking up singing as a career, a fortuitous event led her to first try her hand at dancing, following in the footsteps of her sister Haydee, who was a member of the dance company of the famous Tropicana cabaret. One day, in 1945, two days before the opening night of a big new show, one of the dancers gave in her notice. Having watched her sister rehearse for hours on end, Omara knew the steps by heart and so was offered the vacant place in the company.

“It was a very classy cabaret”, Omara recalls, “but it didn?t make any sense. I was a shy girl and was embarrassed at showing my legs”. It was her mother who actually convinced her not to let the opportunity go by and so she began a dancing career that led her to form a legendary duo with Rolando Espinosa and, in 1961, to become a teacher of popular dance at the Escuela de Instructores de Arte. The relationship between Omara and the Tropicana remains intact today and up to 1998 she still performed there from time to time.

Omara and her sister Haydee also sang well-known American numbers with a group which included César Portillo de la Luz, José Antonio Méndez and blind pianist Frank Emilio Flynn. They called themselves Los Loquibambla and their style, a Cubanised version of the bossa nova with touches of American jazz, was known as “feeling”. In their radio debut, Omara was introduced as “Miss Omara Brown, the girlfriend of “feeling”, the name by which she is still known by many Cubans today. As the singer herself recalls, Cuban music of that time was influenced by styles from different countries such as Argentina, Brazil and, of course, the USA.

To read more about Omara's life and times, click here.

Join this 2008 Latin Grammy winner as she and her band bring down the house with a non-stop 80th birthday celebration!

Duration: 90 min with no intermission.

Photo by Tomás Miña.