Miriam Bayard

Miriam Bayard is a talented and original Cuban singer, professional musician, educator, theater and television actress born in Havana on December 7, 1944 and a resident of the Mexican Republic since 1991, a nation that granted her citizenship in the year 2000.

Miriam Bayard studied and obtained training as a musician and as an educator, having performed in her country of origin as a French language teacher and primary education teacher. She graduated as a pedagogue of piano, music theory and solfege, incorporated from the beginning of her professional career into the National Choir of Cuba and the Musical Theater of Havana.

Miriam Bayard's expressiveness is evocative and captivates with tropical rhythm those who find themselves in her proximity. She possesses a character and discipline that has placed her in a position of preeminence among interpreters of themes with Latin flavor. In addition to her qualities as an artist and performer, Miriam Bayard reintroduced to her homeland, Cuba, Dominican merengue, which was so popular during the 1950s, thanks to the presence and performance of the unforgettable Dominican vocalist Alberto Beltrán, former singer of the magnificent "Sonora Matancera". In the same way, Miriam Bayard brought to Cuban society the sensual and provocative "Lambada" dance, which fundamentally is a mixture of "Carimbó" and "merengue" that caused a sensation throughout the world in the mid-1970s and throughout the 1980s.

The artist distinguished herself from her beginnings as a vocalist and professional singer in the graceful eastern province of Santiago, a city where "she felt great attraction for the music that delighted her from a Santiago balcony, such as that of Miguel Matamoros or Sindo Garay, who with their fascinating ballads delivered serenades to all the enamored hearts of the region. Her inclination toward music was not misplaced, as years later she would become one of the most important figures in Cuban music".

The 1980s were a prodigious decade for Latin American musical art. In Cuba, the voices of Elena Burke, Leonora Rega, Moraima Secada, Marta Strada, Rita Gil, Mirta Medina, Luisa María Güell and Lourdes Torres stood out, while from exile Celia Cruz, Lupe Victoria Yolí Raymond "La Lupe", Olga Guillot and Blanca Rosa Gil imposed their class and interpretive style in Puerto Rico, Mexico, United States, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Peru, Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

Miriam Bayard, after having built a solid cultural infrastructure, burst onto the scene successfully in 1981, inaugurating a new way of interpreting the most original "Cuban son" and "Latin American romantic bolero". From her beginnings she obtained her space as a soloist in Cuba, auditioning in the cabarets "Tropicana", "Copa Room" at the Habana Rivera Hotel, "Hotel Capri" and "Hotel Nacional", entertainment venues that brought together international tourism that admired and enjoyed the presence of artists of Miriam Bayard's stature.

However, an exclusionary political situation and the forced disappearance of cabarets and entertainment centers at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s led to Miriam Bayard's exile, who would be received in Aztec lands, enriched with knowledge, experiences and hopes to build a reputation that would allow her to demonstrate to audiences of all latitudes her worth as an interpreter of the essence of the melodies of her passionate land and as an ambassador of music written by the unforgettable Miguel Matamoros, Eliseo Grenet Sánchez, Sindo Garay, Gonzalo Roy and Manuel Corona, among those of superior significance in her native Cuba. She has also made authentic interpretations of the well-known songs "Caballo Viejo" by Venezuelan Simón Díaz, "Cachita" by Puerto Rican Rafael Hernández Marín and "Cuando Salí de Cuba" by Argentine Luis Aguilé.

Certainly, Miriam Bayard has renewed the good music that was heard in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1950s, adding creativity within a unique style that has received admiration and recognition from the most demanding audiences in Spain, Hungary, Russia, Ethiopia, Angola, Finland, Sweden, Canada, Peru, Panama, Nicaragua, United States and Mexico, the country that embraced her, covering her with its tricolored flag and its royal eagle perched on the blossoming nopal, which is the essence of freedom where Miriam Bayard has managed to realize herself as a renowned artist and as a grateful citizen.

Miriam Bayard plans from her base located in Mexico City the tours she is to undertake to remote countries of the world, with an organized mind that admirably performs her professional functions as an artist and as an administrator of her household. She is a talented, objective and successful woman. She manufactures and edits her own musical projects.

Recently, with the collaboration of José A. Quintana and Hammadi Bayard, she published her most recent CD which she titled "Cuando salí de Cuba", a work of expressive Latin American content that summarizes, according to the informed opinion of José Antonio Quintana Díaz, Miriam Bayard's artistic life, when he states expressly that "she is synonymous with Cubanness, flavor and son".