Beltran, Lola (c. 1931–1996)
Beltran, Lola (c. 1931–1996)
Mexican singer. Name variations: Lola la Grande (Lola the Great). Born around 1931 (Beltran made a point of not discussing her age); died of a stroke in Mexico City on March 24, 1996; children: daughter Maria Elena Leal.
The soulful Lola Beltran, whose emotional Spanish renditions of mariachi ballads entertained Latin Americans for 50 years, was "one of the greatest woman singers in the high-octane pop-ranchera style," wrote Michael Erlewine. She sang of pain, heartache, loneliness, and loss; she sang of life's perpetual melancholy. In 1994, novelist Carlos Fuentes noted: "Passion and desire, joy and risk, tenderness and the cry for existence are the wings of this dove that is the voice of our lady Lola Beltran. I have spent my life living and writing and loving and traveling with the voice of Lola Beltran close to me, on records, over the airwaves, but above all in the soundtrack of memory."
sources:
Erlewine, Michael. All Music Guide. San Francisco: Miller Freeman, 1992.