Milanés was hospitalized for various infections due to an oncohematological disease that had led him to seek medical treatment and settle in Madrid since 2017.
The Cuban singer, guitarist and composer was born on February 24, 1943 in Bayamo, in Granma.
Milanés’s talent appeared early. At the age of six he won a contest singing a Mexican tune on a local radio station in his hometown. His family moved to Havana in the 1950s, he developed his passion in a city then known for its music scene.
After rebel groups led by Fidel Castro overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959, a cultural movement rooted in the ideas of socialism flourished.
Milanés’s reputation grew as one of the pioneers of Nueva Trova, a current closely associated with the rising wave of leftism in Latin America and whose songs often criticized US policy toward the region.
Guitar in hand, Milanés offered a concert together with the Cuban troubadour Silvio Rodríguez in 1968 in Havana, which marked his takeoff and that of Nueva Trova.
Popular songs such as “Yo no te pido”, “Los años mozos”, “Cuba va”, “Yolanda” and “I will step on the streets again”, among others, gained fame and toured the world, sometimes in the voices of interpreters such as Víctor Manuel and Ana Belén, Luis Eduardo Aute, Mercedes Sosa, Marco Antonio Muñiz, Armando Manzanero, Joaquín Sabina, Joan Manuel Serrat and Carlos Varela.
In November 2015, at a ceremony organized in Las Vegas, United States, the Latin Recording Academy awarded him the Grammy Award for musical excellence for a life dedicated to his art.
Milanés, considered one of the voices of the revolution, has also criticized Cuba from public positions due to what he has considered errors.
Shortly after the protests that took place on the island in July 2021, the singer-songwriter signed a document entitled “Cuban Civil Society Manifesto”, in which he urged “urgent” social and economic reforms in Cuba.
“Our country needs – with the union of all – to take steps to new voices and new ways of thinking, which demand our laws, new liberties (…)”, he wrote after signing the document.
His last concert in Havana was in June 2022, in a show that made many of his followers cry, who sang his songs.