Buena Vista Social Club says 'Adios' but diva sings on

Buena Vista Social Club says farewell to the stage in April. They will be in Istanbul and Ankara this month for the last time but Omara Portuondo says she is not ready to hang up the micOmara Portuondo's tiny frame belies the sheer power of a sonorous voice that made her a star in Cuba well before she found global fame with the Buena Vista Social Club around the age most people start claiming their pensions.

Even as the group winds down with their final farewell "Adios! Tour," the 85-year-old, who has been performing since she was just 15, insists she is not ready to hang up the mic.

"None of us could ever have imagined the great success of Buena Vista Social Club; we've achieved more than we could ever have dreamed but it was time for the band to say goodbye," she said before the Hong Kong leg of the tour. But she is adamant: "Music is my life and I won't stop singing." 

It has been 20 years since a twist of fate led American guitarist Ry Cooder and World Circuit's Nick Gold to Cuban star Juan de Marcos Gonzlez, who encouraged a coterie of the island's musical talent - some out of retirement - to join together and create a record.

Crafted in just six days, the album "Buena Vista Social Club," named after the long-closed members' only venue in Havana, sold millions, secured a Grammy, and along with Wim Wenders' Oscar-nominated film documenting its production, thrust Cuban music onto the international stage.

It also exported a vibrant idea of Cuba to a world from which it had been largely closed off since the 1959 revolution and the Cold War. For a generation coming of age in the 1990s in the West, the music of Buena Vista Social Club added a burst of color to the perceived grey palette of Fidel Castro's communism,...