Eliades Ochoa Bustamante

Guitarist and singer. Singer and composer trained in a rural environment. He is regarded as one of the most important Cuban son singers of all time and an important defender of traditional Cuban music.

He was born in Alto Songo, Loma de la Avispa, Oriente. He began playing guitar when he was only 6 years old and by 1958, when he had reached the size of his guitar, he began working to make a living playing his music in the neighborhoods dedicated to prostitution in Santiago de Cuba, thus beginning his professional career. His involvement with the Buena Vista Social Club group and Wim Wenders' film of the same name have given him fame outside of Cuba, although he was already known in the music world.

In the 1960s he was part of the Oriental Quintet. He began his artistic career in Santiago de Cuba in 1963, on the radio program Trinchera Agraria, which was broadcast by CMKC; later he joined the Septeto Típico Oriental, and later in 1978 he joined the Cuarteto Patria, a group that has remained active since its founding in 1940, directed by Francisco Cobas la O (Pancho), whom Ochoa replaced in that role in 1978.

In 1986 the quartet featured performances by Francisco Repilado (Compay Segundo), not only in presentations in Cuba, but also abroad.

This would be the beginning of Compay Segundo's rebirth into the world of art. In 1997, along with other musicians, he won a Grammy Award for the CD Buena Vista Social Club, in the tropical music category; it also included Juan de Marcos, Rubén González, Raúl Planas, Compay Segundo, Pío Leyva, Ibrahim Ferrer, Manuel Licea (Puntillita), Manuel Mirabal (El Guajiro), Ry and Joachim Cooder; he also has four gold records and one platinum record to his credit.

In 2000 his album Sublime ilusión was nominated for a Grammy, and in 2001, Tributo al Cuarteto Patria. He recorded the CD Continental, with Charles Mussewhite; Africando, with Cameroonian saxophonist Mango Dibango, and in 2001, he won the Music Prize from the General Society of Authors and Editors of Spain (SGAE) and from the Association of Performers and Executants of Spain (AIE), the latter for best traditional music album.

He has toured Guadeloupe, Martinique, Grenada, Curaçao, Nicaragua, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Puerto Rico, United States (they performed at Carnegie Hall in New York), Canada, Spain, France (they performed at the Olympia in Paris), Holland, Italy, Japan.

Eliades Ochoa together with Buena Vista Social Club participated in the film "Cubanísimo" by an American filmmaker where he received recognition from international critics and was nominated for a Grammy Award, in the category of best contemporary tropical album, in 2010.