Juana Rivero Casteleiro

Professor and musician. She is responsible for the radio program that brought music education to primary schools, known to all as the Invisible Professor. Titular director of the choir of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television, she compiled the catalog of the distinguished composer José María Vitier.

She deservedly received three National Awards. The National Television Prize (a medium of which she was a pioneer and founder in the country), the National Radio Prize (for her immense and passionate defense of the pedagogical potential of that medium, which she knew how to use for music education like no one else), and, finally, the National Music Prize (for her tireless work as an active musician, choral director, researcher, and pedagogue).

She was born in Candelaria, Pinar del Río. Her father was a pharmacist and also had sugar cane plantations. He acquired a pharmacy, which was an old premises from the 19th century, that exists in Candelaria, and then out of necessity he pursued studies in Pharmacy.

She studied at a music academy in Guanajay, where she came to live as a girl. When she was in third grade they moved to Guanajay where her father had completed his Bachelor's degree as a boarding student and he romantically wanted his children to also play and study in the same places he had known. The whole family went there. She enrolled in a convent school that had certain development from an artistic point of view. The nuns taught art in general. She took painting classes and with Mother Carmen Ruíz de Velasco, she received piano lessons... She organized the school's parties where we performed comedies and managed to stage zarzuelas. Then came the Bachelor's degree, which she completed in the city of Havana, on Teniente Rey and Zulueta. She went to that place every day from Guanajay. A group of girls would come and we left there at 5:28 and she remembers the time well because in town there was a clock she always looked at. The trip took an hour and a half and classes began at seven in the morning. In 1938 she finished her Bachelor's degree.

From 1936 to 1942 she was at Pro Arte Musical and that meant a great deal in her musical and aesthetic formation. Clara Romero de Nicola taught her guitar classes there. She was the one who introduced the study of guitar at the Conservatory. By the way, she also taught her Cuban and Latin American popular music that was not common to hear at that time. She learned beautiful songs that today she remembers with pleasure and updates in her memory, also without hurrying. She completed musical studies at the Reventós Conservatory in Havana and ballet studies at the Pro-Arte Musical Society (today Amadeo Roldán Conservatory).

She begins at the University and becomes a Doctor in Pharmacy. There she formed choirs because practically that was her vocation. At that time the Federation of University Catholic Girls was created where she was able to organize choirs, freely, without having great knowledge. The choir was what she loved most. What she most desired was that the tradition of collective singing be created in Cuba. At the university she tried to make large choirs because she had the impression that it was humanity itself that was singing.

She was a member of the Coral Habana. She initiated choral groups on Cuban television in 1953. She directed the choir of the Lírico Theater.

She worked on the Music Education plan of the Ministry of Education and at the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television. She has conducted choral arrangements of symphonic works and zarzuelas. She created the vocal ensemble of Cuca Rivero (1954) which became the first vocal group linked to television programs. She directed the choir of 40 mixed voices of the National School of Art Instructors that was part of the Cuban artistic delegation to the VII World Festival of Youth and Students held in Helsinki, Finland, in 1962.

She is responsible for the design and implementation of a radio program that brought music education to primary schools.

During 1997 she compiled the catalog of the distinguished Cuban composer José María Vitier, published by SGAE and the Fundación Autor, of Madrid, Spain, which was presented at one of the Events of the IX Edition of the Havana Guitar Contest and Festival, held during 1998.

She has participated in international events in Cuba, Spain, and Moscow. She holds the Alejo Carpentier Medal.