Cuban Singer Omara Portuondo Returns to the U.S.

Omara Portuondo is back. Not that the 79-year-old Cuban songstress ever stopped
performing. She just hadn’t visited the States ever since the 9/11 attacks
triggered all sorts of regulations that made it impossible to obtain a visa.
Now, thanks to policy changes by the Obama administration, the Havana resident
has returned to a country she entertained many times in the ’90s as the sole
female member of the Buena Vista Social Club. “For music reasons that don’t
hurt anyone and only make people happy, I wanted to come here again,” she
recently told Billboard magazine (via Reuters).

The
singer finally has her wish, which means she’ll be able to attend and present
at the Latin Grammys tomorrow in Vegas for the first time, despite having been
nominated before. Her latest
album, which is appropriately titled Gracias,
is up for Best Contemporary Tropical Album. In it, she said, “I tried to
include styles that people who only know me from Buena Vista Social Club
might not know I sing and that are part of our Cuban culture: filin, African
rhythms, songs by Pablo Milanes and Silvio Rodriguez.”
Portuondo,
who has been called the Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughn of her island nation
because of her deep, rich, chocolatey voice, is very thankful indeed to be
included in the ceremony. “I’m going to represent Cuba, because I think I’m
going to be the only one that will be there,” she told the NY Daily News. “I’ll be there for all of the others.”