Ángela Álvarez

Of Cuban origin, specifically from Camagüey, the singer-songwriter was born in 1927. From a very young age she had the dream of dedicating herself to music, as she learned to play piano in childhood. In the school where she was a boarding student as a teenager, she learned to play guitar, and when she was about 15 years old she started composing.

And it is that, although this Cuban singer and composer confesses that her love for music was born when she was very small, it was not until now that, thanks to one of her grandchildren—the musician and composer Carlos José Álvarez—she managed to make the leap to professional music. That said, at a dizzying speed.

"I told my father once that I wanted to be a singer, so he told me: 'you sing very beautifully, my daughter, and I love to hear you, but I wouldn't want you to sing for the world.'"

She heeded her father's words, but her mind never stopped writing and composing songs. She did it even when she left Cuba. Although she remained confined to the family sphere, Álvarez continued singing and composing songs that she initially kept in her memory, but later began to transcribe in notebooks.

In her youth she had to send off her four children from the island in 1962 in Operation Peter Pan because she was denied exit. She emigrated a few months later to the United States, leaving her husband, but the reunion with her children, who were in an orphanage, took several years because she needed to have a job with an income that would allow her to support them all, and that was not easy. Without knowing how to speak English, she had to accept the jobs she could find: picking tomatoes in the fields or cleaning offices at night.

"When I felt something that moved me, I would start to compose. Especially when I left Cuba. I lived in Puerto Rico, which has the same climate as Cuba, and when I traveled on the roads and saw things that reminded me of Cuba, I composed right there. In Mexico I also composed. Wherever I went and liked it, I felt the desire to express what I was feeling," she recalls.

In addition to exile with all its implications, Álvarez suffered the death of her husband from cancer in 1977 and later that of her daughter María, from the same cause. Her children were a constant source of inspiration; she composed the song "En mi jardín" for them, and specifically for María, she wrote a song that bears her name. The song "Camino sin rumbo" she dedicated to her husband.

With those notebooks, some already worn by time, she surprised her grandson Carlos José when he asked her to show him the songs she had written. From there came the 15 songs that make up her first album, and there are also—according to Álvarez—about 30 more songs still unpublished. The impetus came from her grandson, composer Carlos José Álvarez. When she was 91 years old, she gave her first concert in Los Angeles.

Her first self-titled album came out just a year ago with 15 original compositions. It was precisely this production that led to her nomination for the Latin Grammy.

Thus, the album can be heard as the musical work that it is, but also as a kind of sentimental diary of its author.

In the last four years, Ángela Álvarez offered, at the historic Ávalon theater in Los Angeles, her first concert.

The recital was presented by actor Andy García, who also played the bongó and was the producer of Miss Ángela, a documentary directed by filmmakers Paul Toogood and Lloyd Stanton about the life of this nonagenarian.

At the same time, Ángela Álvarez had the opportunity to play a small role in the new version of the film The Father of the Bride—starring Andy García and Gloria Estefan—in which she appears singing the classic bolero "Quiéreme mucho."

And now, on top of all that, there is the nomination for the Latin Grammy for her first album, which includes 15 of her compositions and was recorded by first-rate musicians who, in turn, have been in the past winners or Grammy nominees.