[buy it now at amazon.com]
Havana, November 15 (RHC) -- The Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez,
described as the heart and mind of the "Nueva Trova" musical movement,
presented his new album "Cita con Angeles" or "Date with Angels" in the Casa
de Las Americas cultural centre in Havana on Friday.

It was in the same 'Casa de las Americas' that Silvio made his debut before
the Cuban public in the 'Protest Song Concert' of 1967. The poet Roberto
Fernández Retamar President of the cultural centre classified Silvio as one
of the great lyricists of all time. When speaking of the new album Retamar
said he "read the songs first as poems and then listened to the poems as
songs". This symbiotic blend of verse and music is central to the "Nueva
Trova" or new ballad movement that Silvio Rodriguez, together with other
Cuban songwriters such as Pablo Milanés, made internationally famous.

Silvio admitted that he began recording the songs without planning to
produce an album, but added that it was a moment of great euphoria and
inspiration in his life following the birth of his first grandson and of his
youngest daughter Malva. Silvio's wife Niurka González plays all the flute
and clarinet pieces on the new album.

Silvio also thanked Cuban musical legends Chucho Valdés, Frank Fernández,
Tata Guines, Juan Formell and Leo Brouwer for their help with "Cita con
Ángeles".

When asked about recent comments from Pablo Milanés on the political
situation within Cuba, Silvio responded simply and eloquently: "My whole
life has been a battle of ideas", he said referring to his participation in
the protest song movement of the 1960s and his visit to Chile in 1972. "For
the first time in my life I felt truly Latin American" he remarked.

Silvio rejected claims that he is a spiritual leader to a generation of
Latin American youth, saying that people identify so well with his songs for
the very fact that they recognise their own lives in his poetry. The final
song on the new album, a nursery rhyme entitled "Qué Sé Yo" or "How should I
know", talks of the singer as "one of the crowd" blown by the same winds,
drenched by the same rain with a throat that answers when his heart is moved
to sing. Silvio has no current plans to tour as he has already begun work on
his next album.