Singer.
Elena Burke (Havana, 1928 -2002) began her artistic career in 1941 when, after participating as a singer in a radio program for amateur artists, her voice captured the audience through the most important broadcasting stations of the country.
She performed at the most renowned night centers and theaters in Havana; traveled to Mexico as part of a quartet, and then joined the harmonic quartets in fashion at that time: Facundo Rivero´s and Orlando de la Rosa´s. Together with Omara Portuondo and Moraima Secada she founded the D'Aida, quartet, being vocally trained for many years by its director, Aida Diestro.
Her career as a soloist began in 1958, visiting Europe to participate in the Cannes Festival and in other important events. Since her first individual performances, her contralto voice, one of the most beautiful of Cuban music, turned her into a true legend.
It is impossible to describe the history of the Feeling Movemen
t, of the New Cuban Trova or the renovation of son without mentioning Elena. For the first time, her voice sang the songs composed by renowned artists, like Pablo Milanés and Juan Formell, turning them into hits.
Her repertoire, based on a long and rich professional experience, included authors from different times and styles, always maintaining her own way of singing through a select and vast list of songs.
Due to her warm, deep and evenly colored voice, her technical skill, her peculiar expression, the wide range of her voice timbre capable of reaching low and high tones and her professional and impeccable bolero performance in the already first-rate feeling genre scope of the Cuban song, Elena Burke will be always called "Madame Feeling" in Cuba .
The Cuban poetess Nancy Morejón has beautifully described the significance Elena Burke will always have for the Cuban people: "Elena Burke is one of the greatest experiences within the Cuban song genre. Countless adjectives and epithets have tried to define her. `Her Majesty Elena Burke` or `Madame Feeling` are among the most commonly used. The people, with its millennial wisdom, have defined her in a better way. Elena. As simple as that. And this is how we call her every day either on the Havana streets, sea ports, airplanes or any other place in our Island or even abroad. She, herself, is the history of the Cuban song of our days."
