Cuban Musicologist Laura Vilar Passes Away

June 1, 2024

The prominent Cuban musicologist and researcher Laura Vilar Álvarez passed away on May 30, 2024, at the age of 66, according to a statement from the Cuban Institute of Music (ICM).

At the time of her death, Vilar was serving as director of Revista Clave, the ICM's scientific publication, and as Cuba's representative to the International Council of Traditional Music since 2014.

Vilar was also a professor and cultural manager, and since her graduation from the Higher Institute of Art (ISA) in 1984, she developed important work in the preservation and dissemination of Cuban musical heritage.

In 2005, she assumed the direction of the Research and Development Center for Cuban Music, an institution with which she had been affiliated since her youth as a researcher and where she consolidated her professional training.

For her meritorious scientific work, she received important distinctions in the academic field and at the main events of the institutional music system, among which stand out the Award for the most outstanding scientific result of the five-year period 1986-1990, from the Ministry of Culture.

Likewise, she was honored with the Special Prize for Musicological Research, Cubadisco 2018, and received the Distinction for National Culture.

Vilar had a prolific career; she was founder of Producciones Abdala, where she created the Sound Information Center; she collaborated with Unicornio Record Label and with Atril Musical Publishing House.

She participated in the preparation of the files for Cuban Punto, Rumba, Bolero, and Son for their Declaration as Intangible Heritage of Humanity; she was a member of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Uneac) and of the Latin American Branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (Iaspm-AL).

She collaborated as author of the Dictionary of Spanish and Spanish American Music and was coauthor of the Unesco publication: The Universe of Music a History and of the scientific work Instruments of the Folkloric Popular Music of Cuba. Atlas. She also wrote the book Musical Traditions in the Caribbean: Granada.

All of her academic work and cultural management was marked by her unwavering commitment to Cuban culture and the Cuban Revolution, as an activist of the Communist Party of Cuba.

Her publications will remain an essential reference for new generations of music specialists and for all those who wish to approach the history of Cuban culture.