HIDDEN ERROR: Usage of "Spouse" is not recognized

Rubén Rada (born 17 July 1943); moniker "El Negro Rada") is an Afro-Uruguayan percussionist, composer and singer. He is closely associated with candombe, an Afro–Uruguayan music and dance genre that is built around a chorus of tamboriles – Uruguayan barrel drums. Rada has recorded more than 30 albums, today considered Uruguayan classics. Rada's music, labelled candombe beat, combines pop, rock, Brazilian styles and many other international musical styles with typically Uruguayan sounds like those of the candombe drums and of the murga choruses typical of the Uruguayan Carnival. Rada has composed some of Uruguay's most cherished songs.

Career

In 1965, together with Eduardo Mateo, he formed the band El Kinto Conjunto. This was the first group in Uruguay to create the beat genre in Spanish (Castilian) and to fuse rock with Latin American elements unprecedented in first world formats. In 1969 the success of his Candombe song ‘Las Manzanas’ (‘The Apples’), introduced him as a solo artist to a first album and led him to participate in Rio de Janeiro’s Festival of Popular Music. A year later he formed the band TÓTEM, one of the pillars of national rock music. Tótem was one of the most important massive phenomena of Uruguayan music and represented the height of the Candombe beat. In total he has recorded more than thirty albums, his latest being "Fan" (2009). Many of his albums are considered Uruguayan classics.