Eliades Ochoa Awarded at Spanish Popular Music Festival

February 15, 2024

Cuban musician Eliades Ochoa (Santiago de Cuba, 1946) has been awarded the La Mar de Músicas de Cartagena 2024 prize, which he will receive on July 22, the date on which he will perform a concert at this popular music festival in Spain.

The mayor of the Spanish city of Cartagena, Noelia Arroyo, assured this Thursday that in this way the festival honors «the brilliant guitarist and singer from Santiago, whose melodious voice has taken authentic traditional Cuban music to the entire world».

Eliades Ochoa is a regular at the festival, which he has visited on numerous occasions, recalled the mayor.

«The first time he set foot in Cartagena was in 1998, when La Mar de Músicas was organizing a Cuba Special,» Arroyo pointed out, adding that that year «Cuban music became very popular throughout the world, thanks to the Buena Vista Social Club, a project in which Eliades participated».

In 2010 he premiered the «Afrocubismo» project at La Mar de Músicas, in which the music of Cuba and Africa came together, and in 2022 he sold out tickets on his last visit to the Cartagena festival.

Ochoa's voice has taken authentic trova, originally from eastern Cuba, to the entire world, making universal a style of music inspired both by the Spanish décimas of the ancient troubadours and by African rhythms, which the troveros carried from town to town with stories full of liveliness and catchy rhythms.

The festival has been organized since 1995 by the Cartagena City Council and takes place in July, dedicated to what are known as world music, popular genres from different cultures that succeed outside their communities of origin.