Elena Burke will never die. Although she is not among us anymore, those who knew her, women and men who sang with her, or who accompanied her at the piano and the guitar, or who gave songs to her to make them worldwide famous using her voice and passion, still feel her by her side.
Elena Burke cannot leave this dimension Cubans inhabit because always, even if everyone shut up and jukeboxes look like fossils of magical and ancient animals, there will be someone who needs to hear her resounding voice that breaks anything that prevents love from emerging or silences hate for a while.
She is the voice in the dark that makes the walls of the heart rumble, that room where so many things and people live and die.
That is why she is back in Havana to celebrate her 85th birthday, twice in one day, this February 28th. The first celebration will come in the voices of Omara Portuondo and Miguel Angel Céspedes, who will give a concert at 5 pm in the Theatre of the National Museum of Fine Arts.
The other entertainment will come from the vocal combination made up by Coco Freeman, Beatriz Marquez, Algeria Fragoso, Anais Abreu and Vania Borges at the Covarrubias Hall of the National Theatre of Cuba at 8:30 pm.
Together they will call on the Lady Feeling and will put before her the songs that let her to take over time and turn it into something elastic and tamable.