Cuban Omara Portuondo to receive Caribbean Festival prize

Cuban Omara Portuondo will be one of the winners of the Leyenda Viva prize this year conferred by the regional event Caribbean Muzik Festival, to be celebrated from October 28 to 31 in this capital, as highlights PL.

With the Cuban 84-year-old diva will be also awarded Masekela (Sout Africa), Ronnie Butler (Bahamas), Jimmy Cliff (Jamaica), Emile Straker (Barbados) and McCartha Calypso Rose Sandy-Lewis (Trinidad and Tobago), all of them considered as high-level musicians.

The prize recognizes every year Caribbean and other countries’ artists with a relevant career in and out their native countries.

Portuondo is qualified as one of the best Latin American voices and she is even called frequently “The Cuban Edith Piaf” for her musical conditions.

All through her career she has received several important awards in her native land and abroad, the 2006 National Music Award in Cuba, among them.

The Caribbean Muzik Festival will pay homage the 30th anniversary of the Nassau Agreement, which smoothed the way to put an end to the Apartheid in South Africa and to release Nelson Mandela.

Special guests to the event are the Soweto Gospel choir and the ballet of the famous Cuban cabaret Tropicana.

The festival—which came forth in 1994—will present Caribbean singers and bands that play the soca, the calypso, the reggae and the junkanoo, among other rhythms.

Translation: Liana Fleitas (Cubarte)