# Sara Rosa González Gómez

**Date of birth:** July 13, 1949

**Date of death:** February 1, 2012

**Categories:** Arts, Music, performer, female composer, professor, Society, Singer, Musician

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Composer, singer and guitarist. Founder of the Nueva Trova Movement. With exceptional vocal qualities

She was born in the Havana neighborhood of Cayo Hueso, her father was a tobacco worker and her mother a seamstress; both possessed a strong sense of Cuban identity and justice, as well as an enormous love for music and dancing, all of these things were passed on to little Sara.

According to her own words "so that her parents could stop working", her first playmate was a radio, which reinforced her love of music.

The excellent musician Nené Enrizo gave her her first guitar lessons and he encouraged Sara's parents to allow her to continue her musical studies.

In 1966 she enrolled at the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory to study viola for four years.

In addition to the aforementioned studies, she is a graduate of the National School of Art Instructors, where for more than a year she is a student of Leopoldina Núñez about whom she comments "… with her I learned more, much more than during the four years I spent at the conservatory, that's the truth". She later worked as a guitar and solfege teacher at that same school.

At the beginning of the 70s she makes forays into singing, is part of a group of some popularity "Los Dimos" and performs as a duo with Pedro Luis Ferrer.

During her time as a student she meets and befriends Silvio Rodríguez and Pablo Milanés, who together with Noel Nicola founded "La Nueva Trova Cubana"; they influenced her to set to music the "Versos Sencillos" by José Martí creating her first LP album and from there comes her connection with that musical movement, within which she has been characterized as its most representative female voice.

Starting in 1972 she joins the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora of the ICAIC (GES), directed by the renowned guitarist, composer and conductor Leo Brower; by that time, she had set aside her career as a teacher.

In the GES she received courses in interpretation, composition and instrumentation from incomparable teachers such as Federico Smith, Juan Elósegui and Leo Brower himself.

With the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora she participates in various television presentations and frequently appears on radio programs.

Upon the dissolution of the GES, Sara, like the other members of the group, decided to work alone, accompanied only by her guitar, however she did not avoid making presentations with some of her fellow performers or with groups such as Irakere, Manguaré, Los Cañas, Orquesta Todo Estrellas and others.

She undertakes at that time an tireless and commendable activity on stages throughout the world, representing her country's culture and becoming one of the most relevant artistic communication phenomena of Cuban music.

Always advancing in her work to promote Cuba's music, she receives honors in such different places as Rome or Baracoa, Santiago de Cuba or Venice; distinctions and applause that she cultivates equally in a school for teenagers as in the Kremlin Palace.

Her multifaceted character impels her at the beginning of the 80s to form together with Virulo, Carlos Ruiz de la Tejera, Jesús del Valle and others, the Conjunto Nacional de Espectáculos, a satirical branch of musical theater, which had resounding local and foreign success and which filled her with experience and maturity in her scenic performance.

In 1984 she joins her musical work with Guaicán, musicians without professional training whom she converts into her students and establishes a kind of workshop for experimentation and development that has not ceased until our days, where some have left, but others have appeared resuming the line of work of the now defunct group and who have become "Sara's musicians" as they proudly call themselves.

Sara has performed in different places around the world, from Paris to New York; she has also visited places as culturally distinct as Korea, Portugal, Australia, the Soviet Union, and in our Latin America she has performed in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia among other places, without neglecting countless concerts held in her beloved homeland.

In her musical endeavors, Sara has sung in numerous venues such as the National Theater of Havana, the National Auditorium of Mexico, the Metropolitan Theater of Medellín, the Palau of Barcelona, the Alcalá Theater of Madrid and many others of equal importance, but she has also performed in a large number of universities and public squares.

She has shared stages with artists of the caliber of: Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés, Noel Nicola, Augusto Blanca, Joan Manuel Serrat, Chico Buarque, Mercedes Sosa, Soledad Bravo, Daniel Viglietti, Pete Seeger, Roy Brown, Pedro Guerra, Beth Carvalho, Liuba María Hevia, Anabell López, Marta Campos and Heidi Igualada.

In addition to her personal performances, Sara has also done musical productions for film, television and radio.

In her discography there are several LP albums recorded with the EGREM label, as well as some CDs recorded for PM Records, Bis Records and CRIN; she has also participated in various musical anthologies.

Regardless of her artistic career, a large number of people and institutions can attest to her strong sense of altruism for the causes of the dispossessed.

Sara passed away after a long battle with cancer in early February 2012