Haydée Milanés: At last in Cuba, my country, the country I love, the album "Amor"

August 10, 2019

With the simplicity and modesty that always accompany her, and paying tribute to the work of her father Pablo Milanés, Haydée Milanés surprises her followers once again with the second volume of Amor: Edición Deluxe, a phonogram that was announced and promoted several months ago on social networks, which she presented to the press last Friday afternoon in the Salón de Mayo of the Pabellón Cuba, as part of the 20th edition of the Feria Arte en la Rampa.

Under the Bis Music record label of ARTex, in this second disc that forms part of a double album, the Cuban interpreter and composer, unlike the first one —in which she performs duets exclusively with her father— is accompanied by well-known and respected voices in Iberoamerica, such as Julieta Venegas, Omara Portuondo, Ibeyi, Lila Downs, Francisco Céspedes, Carlos Varela, Rosalía León, Pavel Núñez, Edgar Oceransky, Pedro Aznar, Silvia Pérez Cruz, Joaquín Sabina, Fito Páez and Chico Buarque, to perform classic songs and other lesser-known works by the author of Amo esta isla.

This new record proposal is also the result of intensive investigative work by Haydée, which she combines with her experience as the daughter of the founder of Cuban Nueva Trova, who inspired her from childhood and allowed her to discover how songs are made, how to listen to them for the first time, and even sing them alongside the person who created them.

In this meeting with the press and public, the young artist reaffirmed her admiration for Pablo's work and confessed that while she was in the production of this project, she felt certain fear about how her father would receive the result. Something that no longer happens to her, as she knows of the satisfaction that hearing the album produced in Pablo.

Behind the second volume of Amor: Edición Deluxe are hours of intense work by Haydée as a music producer, with great meticulousness in the recording of each song, in the selection of who would accompany her in performing them, in working with different genres and styles. And above all, the sound result obtained shows the artistic and aesthetic maturity achieved by the youngest daughter of Pablo Milanés.

This new album contains 16 songs by the Cuban singer-songwriter, some very well-known like Yolanda, Identidad, La vida no vale nada; and others rescued —according to the interpreter herself— to save the soul of those who listen to them: Todos los ojos te miran, El primer amor, El amor de mi vida, Ya ves. Songs that reaffirm once more that Haydée is an artist in the broadest sense of the word, who knows what she loves and how to defend it.

She makes this felt, both musically and humanly speaking, to all those who have followed her for several years, when she decided to commit to the art of sound and left, with her talent and professionalism, a definitive mark on Cuban musical history.

The young interpreter and composer was accompanied in this presentation by journalist Raúl Nogués and by Ela Ramos, general manager of the Bis Music record label, both praised this new production and Haydée's artistic work, who said goodbye asserting: "Today is a special day, because at last the Amor album is in Cuba, my country, the country that I love."

Haydée Milanés will offer a concert on August 16th at 5 p.m. on the main stage of the Pabellón Cuba at the Feria Arte en la Rampa, in which she will perform several songs from the Amor: Edición de lujo album.

Words from Raúl Nogués at the presentation of the album Amor by Haydée Milanés:

After a simple listening of this double album, with no greater intention than to know and recognize it, standing in silence itself, a series of resonances begin to emerge gathered around the same conclusion: the certainty of witnessing a memorable birth. It is above all the result of emotion from music that tells you: here I am, body and soul, and it is then that from now on, one can no longer, nor wants to free oneself from those truths. In that recognition, that affinity, that opening one's arms definitively, one surrenders convinced before the main statement: its title Amor. How well-named this double album is! It is the tribute of a daughter who has confessed again and again where her song comes from, her love for music; it is the magical gift that the honored father receives, who consciously or unconsciously, planted the miracle of sounds in his daughter who embraces her roots.

In both CDs a song is repeated, I speak of Ya ves, a piece that as musician and scholar Leonardo Acosta would say is one of those within Pablo Milanés' catalog that has a more baroque flavor. Here we have it in two unrepeatable moments: Haydée-Pablo and in the second volume within such an extensive catalog. At this point several of the pieces contained in this double album, kneaded by the unmistakable breath of Haydée, have been launched from this country, and beyond the seas heading to safe harbor: all kinds of sensibilities that will see fit to make space for it, alongside other versions of those same songs, some already classic in Iberoamerica. Haydée and Pablo Milanés intertwined in a first album where with clean music they offer as naturally as the world itself, singing lessons: it is not the voice for the voice, it is what they do with the voice, putting in orbit good taste, the mastery of one who knows where yes, where no. The second disc of this album where creators from several countries gathered with the same Love for Pablo Milanés' work gives us the opportunity to see clearly diversity in unity. A challenge that Haydée Milanés assumed placing us with each step she takes at the edge of amazement, on the road to the beautiful. It would be enough to mention just some of those names that accompany her: Chico Buarque, Lila Downs, Omara Portuondo, Pacho Céspedes, Silvia Pérez Cruz among others, for the guarantees to become tangible; but there is more, Haydée Milanés entrusted the arrangements and put in the hands of experienced and talented musicians the clothing of each piece. Then the gratitude is double when we discover that she convened Cucurucho Valdés, Osaín del Monte, Dayron Ortiz, Raúl Verdecia or Jorge Aragón, Enrique Plá among others as arrangers or accompanying musicians.

I had the pleasure of seeing the making of these discs that turn out to be one and the same by concept. I saw the eyes of Haydée Milanés and her husband Alejandro Gutiérrez shine brightly with each decision, with each finding, and I also felt them sometimes with a tired voice that does not surrender because it clings to a truth that sustains it. Among these and other nuances there was always search and devotion, and finally they sang victory. They and those who have had to do with this tribute to beauty. Hopefully this double album resonates much more and continues beating on radio stations and television channels, but above all, hopefully what it defends and contains in four letters, multiplies from within those who know and can listen and learn from AMOR.