Carlos Puebla

When I was about 10 years old, I listened a very funny song in the car radio while we were going to the beach. I liked it very much, but I never heard it again during years. Anyway, I always remembered the chorus:"si no fuera por Emiliana nos quedaríamos con las ganas de tomar café". The song is a tribute to Emiliana, a woman who worked in some king of cuban hotel for workers.

Years later, in the napster times, I found it:

Lyrics here

The song is still very funny to me, so here it is for public enjoying :-)

Carlos Puebla Biography (from wikipedia)

Born into a modest family, he did several types of manual jobs during his youth (carpenter, mechanic, sugarcane worker, shoemaker), but quickly became interested in music, and especially in the guitar. He learned how to play the instrument by himself, without a teacher.

He began composing during the 1930s, and met with a certain amount of popularity in his native city. He recorded his first songs in the 1950s with his group Los Tradicionales, formed in 1953, and politically he stood beside Fidel Castro before the 1959 Revolution.

In 1961, he went on tour in several countries with his musicians. His music, as well as his political activity, turned his concerts into a success. He was thenceforth called "the singer of the Cuban Revolution" and other world tours followed. More than an ambassador for Cuban music, he was an ambassador for Cuba.

In 1965, the night after Fidel Castro's speech announcing Che Guevara's departure from the government, Puebla, seized by passion, composed what would become his most celebrated work, Hasta Siempre, Commandante, a true declaration of love for and hope in Che.

On 12 July 1989, he died in Havana after a long illness. His ashes were transferred to the cemetery of his native city five years later. A plaque there reads: yo soy ésto que soy, un simple trovador que canta ("I am what I am, a simple troubadour who sings").