Carlos Varela.
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Carlos Varela (born April 11, 1963 in Havana) is a Cuban musician and singer-songwriter, a faithful exponent of the Cuban Nueva Trova of recent times. From the generation of Santiago Feliú, Gerardo Alfonso and Frank Delgado, which is later than that of Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés, etc., taking them as references for their themes, among them, Coins in the air, Like the fish, Tropicollage, Lucas and Lucía, etc., but with a more current touch. At the beginning of the 90s, Varela made several tours inside and outside of Cuba together with Silvio Rodríguez and Pablo Milanés.
In 1992 he published his album “Monedas al Aire”, where the song “Muro” appears, a song that Miguel Bosé later made his main single from his album “11 Maneras de Ponerse el Sombrero” (WEA -1998). In 1995 he toured extensively with Joaquín Sabina through various cities in Spain and recorded his album “Como Los Peces”; phonogram that was the winner of the important ONDAS prize in Spain in the category of Revelation Artist.
That same year, Varela and Sabina composed “Tan Joven y Tan Viejo” together, a mega hit by the Spanish musician who appears on Sabina's album “Yo Mí Me Contigo”. His performances take place in Canada, Spain, Mexico, Venezuela, Panama, Colombia, Chile, Sweden, Denmark, the United States and many other countries sharing stages with Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés, Fito Páez, Joaquín Sabina, Mercedes Sosa and others. Nubes, Carlos Varela's only acoustic album to date, appeared in the middle of 2000, with songs like “Muros y Puertas” and “Una voz” that would soon become anthology songs for the artist.
In 2005, the award-winning Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu chose the song “A Word” for his short for the BMW car company “The Hire – Powder Keg”, where the English actor Clive Owen became known in North America. A year later this song was selected by the American director Tony Scott (1944–2012) for the final scene of the film Man on Fire, starring Denzel Washington, Christopher Walken, Marc Anthony and Dakota Fanning, among others. This helped this ballad become his most covered song and was translated into a dozen languages.