Liuba María Hevia

Cuban singer/songwriter Liuba María Hevia first picked up the guitar and began performing at eight, quickly immersing herself in regional folk traditions. By 1990 she had launched an ambitious effort to fuse an array of Latin genres—son, tango, milonga, vallenato, and guajira—culminating in the release of her debut album, Coloreando la Esperanza, three years later. In 1995 she gathered a selection of locally cherished habaneras for the album Habaneras en el Tiempo, issued on the Cuban imprint RTV, and in the same year she completed the children-oriented Señor Arcoiris. Nueva trova pioneer Silvio Rodríguez lent his voice to her 1999 release, Del Verso a la Mar.