Recognized as the foremost figure in Cuban music, Maria Teresa Vera ranked as the leading female exponent of trova while also ranking among the style’s most accomplished vocalists in any category. She launched a career as a professional performer and composer in the early twentieth century, achieving wide popularity at a time when such a path remained exceptionally rare for women. Her command of trova, the rural song form that preceded the son’s widespread popularity, helped establish the foundation for the surge of Cuban commercial music during the 1930s and 1940s; her reputation as a trovadora endured long after newer fashions displaced the older style. Born in Guanajay, Pinar del Rio province, on February 6, 1895, she first studied guitar under Jose Diaz. In 1911, at fifteen, she made her Havana debut at a tribute concert honoring Arquimedes Pous. She soon formed the first of several duos—a format she would repeatedly choose—with Rafael Zequeira; together they performed across Cuba and made multiple trips to New York for recording dates. Following Zequeira’s death in 1924, Vera worked for several years as a soloist and with various accompanists before beginning a new duo partnership with Miguelito Garcia in 1926. She also assembled her own ensemble, the Sexteto Occidente, which accompanied her back to New York for further sessions. In 1937 she joined forces with Lorenzo Hierrezuelo; the collaboration proved durable enough to continue for the next twenty-five years. During that span the pair broadcast regularly on Cuban radio and visited Mexico in 1954 to champion traditional trova. Illness prompted Vera’s retirement in 1962, by which time she was firmly established among Cuba’s greatest female singers. The neo-traditionalist nueva trova movement held her in high esteem, and several of her compositions, above all the signature piece “Veinte Años,” entered the standard repertoire. She died in Havana in 1965. Three decades afterward the all-star tribute album À Maria Teresa Vera appeared, marking the centenary of her birth.
