Pablo Milanés, a great musician and a critic of Cuba’s regime, has died

The first time this columnist heard Pablo Milanés perform it was at an improvised Saturday afternoon concert in a shantytown on the desert outskirts of Lima in 1986. He was accompanied on that and many other occasions by Silvio Rodríguez. They were the tireless musical ambassadors of the Cuban revolution when, despite its police state, it still inspired some respect for having expelled the yanquis and for its achievements in health care and education. Over the following decades the revolution shrivelled into a repressive pastiche. But Mr Milanés, who died of cancer in a hospital in Madrid on November 22nd, grew and grew. He was a voice, a musician and a poet, a transcendent Cuban who was critical of his country’s regime but loyal to its people. His death, in voluntary exile, comes as the island plumbs new depths of desperation.