Cuban Songwriter Lázaro García Passed Away in Cienfuegos

April 16, 2022

Songwriter Lázaro García, one of the founders of the New Song Movement in Cuba, passed away this Friday at the age of 74, a victim of esophageal cancer.

García was born on December 31, 1947 in this city, 245 kilometers southeast of Havana, and throughout his artistic career he shared the stage with leading figures of Cuban music such as Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés, Vicente Feliú, Noel Nicola and Sara González, among others.

Although his vast career includes compositions for film and theater, with the enriching possibility that foreign and local performers have made many of his compositions their own, with the opportunity to be part of various groups and to serve in the leadership of key cultural institutions such as EGREM, the ICRT, the Eusebio Delfín music recording studios (founded and directed by him from 1996 to 2003) and the Abdala studios (directed by him between 2004 and 2008).

A heartfelt farewell to the great troubadour Lázaro García, a true Cienfuegian, whose work, marked by romantic poetry, reflects his noble soul and his commitment to the highest patriotic values, wrote Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel on his Twitter account.

Among his main achievements was the Grand Prize of the Adolfo Guzmán Cuban Music Competition in 1984.

During more than half a century of artistic life, he performed on stages in Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Spain, France and Bolivia, the latter country where in May 1980 he was detained by agents of the military government of General Luis García Meza.