Audio By Carbonatix
From a distance Delia Diaz de Villegas moves with the self-confidence and flair of a Hollywood starlet. Strikingly attractive with expressive green eyes, cherry lips, pale skin, and long red hair, she barely shows any emotion while approaching a visitor amid the rumblings of Little Havana. Her music conveys that same poise, and it has made her one of the hottest acts in town.
In a short time the 40-year-old Cuban singer/songwriter has developed a strong fan base in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, where she regularly does standing-room-only gigs at Hoy Como Ayer in Little Havana. With a soft voice and loose delivery best suited for a lounge setting, Diaz de Villegas always seems to create a relaxed atmosphere. In Madriguera, her most recent production, Diaz de Villegas fuses Arabic, Gypsy, and flamencoinfluenced rhythms with Cuban percussion in cuts such as “Toro Torero” (“Bull Bullfighter”) and “Shalom Compay.”
“I’m a balladeer twenty times over, but working with flamenco came easy to me because growing up in Cuba I was exposed to a lot of it at home,” says Diaz de Villegas, who remembers listening to Sara Montiel records as a child on the island. On both “Torero” and “Compay,” where the renowned flamenco-rock ensemble Navajita Plateada accompanies her, Diaz de Villegas overshadows the acoustic-guitarladen songs with a vocal attitude rarely heard in most of her previous material. But she retains her passion for ballads, effortlessly moving through the more subdued “Cada Vez” (“Each Time”) and “Sin Ti” (“Without You”), the latter a homage to her Christian faith.
