One of the most beloved singers and composers in Cuba, Pablo Milanés began his career in the 60s singing with vocal quartets--El Cuarteto del Rey, which sang "American Negro spirituals," and Los Bucaneros. A singer and composer of filin--the hyperromantic evolution of bolero that surged at the end of the 40s--he first attracted widespread notice as a composer in 1965 with "Mis 22 Años" ("My 22 Years") sung by Elena Burke, one of the legendary filin singers.

In 1967 Milanés ran afoul of the authorities and was placed in the infamous UMAP camps. These were work camps, under the pretext of military service, for undesirables. Pablo was put into a camp for homosexuals, from which he escaped. He was rescued from his troubles with the state by Haydée Santamaría, a heroine of the Revolution who had the power to shield him from persecution.

Haydée had the responsibility for the cultural institution Casa de las Américas, and organized out of that institution the Centro de la Canción Protesta, where the first concerts of the newly named Nueva Trova movement appeared, whose most prominent voices included among many others Milanés, Silvio Rodríguez, Noel Nicola and Sara González. The "protests" were of course directed not at the Cuban government but at American imperialism; Milanés apparently underwent a kind of conversion experience, and became an ardent revolutionary in spite of having been imprisoned in one of that revolution's worst excesses. In 1968, Alfredo Guevara, director of the ICAIC, the Cuban film institute, created a kind of think-tank for the new music--the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC. Under the tutelage of composer and guitarist Leo Brouwer, a group of politically-oriented singer-songwriters received intensive musical education and worked together on a daily basis with the best young instrumentalists in the country, including such artists as the brilliant pianist Emiliano Salvador, who then played with Milanés before dying in 1992, saxophonist Carlos Averhoff and drummer Ignacio Berroa. Averhoff and Berroa both live in Miami today.

Milanés became a superstar in Latin America, known both for his revolutionary anthems and his love songs. Probably his biggest hit of all is "Yolanda," a love song with no overt political content.

Though his natural genre is filin, he is completely comfortable in all genres of Cuban music and has increasingly in recent years devoted himself to its heritage--he recorded "Chan Chan" with Compay Segundo years before there was a Buena Vista Social Club.

At its best, his music makes the listener feel the necessity of commitment to an ideal, whether social or personal, that might be worth dying for. One of Milanés's daughters, Haydée, is named for Haydée Santamaría, who ultimately committed suicide by putting a gun in her mouth. His song to his baby daughter evoking her namesake, "Son Para Despertar a Una Negrita," is one of his most touching compositions. Milanés is popularly considered to be one of Cuba's great voices. Possessed of a monochromatic but mellifluous vocal instrument, he seems incapable of singing out of tune. His music is possessed of a high seriousness and humorlessness; his concerts can be rather heavy affairs, since he is in constant pain from a degenerative bone disease in his hip, which has necessitated numerous operations and forces him to perform sitting down.