03/03/2021 – 2:40 PM (GMT-4)
Popular Cuban singer Dagoberto Planos Despaigne, one of the lead vocalists of the Karachi Orchestra, died on the morning of this Wednesday at the age of 64 in the city of Santiago de Cuba where he lived, due to complications from cirrhosis of the liver.
Planos died in Saturnino Lora Provincial Hospital, where he was admitted for 11 days for his liver disease, but he could not overcome the severity of his health, according to Sierra Maestra’s official newspaper Fernando Álvarez Caula, director of the “Karachi”. .
“Your timbre of voice and charisma in songs like Saina and Bobiné, are legends in carnivals and every celebration,” the El Septeto Santiaguero page posted on Facebook. “Although sorrow engulfs us in these moments … we will remember you with the joy you always radiated, Dago,” he concluded.
The artist, characterized by wearing dark glasses, turned 65 in June and has been a member of the popular Karachi Orchestra since 1982. Almost all of the Santiago group’s best-known songs have his voice.
The Sierra Maestra newspaper emphasizes that his death was a hard blow to the group in particular, and to national culture in general. “It is a blow to the group, because we have lost a prominent singer; it is also losing the culture of Santiago de Cuba and the country, ”said Álvarez Caula, according to Santiago journalist Cuscó Tarradell.
The Karachi Orchestra was founded in 1976 in Santiago de Cuba and among its most important members highlights the famous saxophonist Pablo Moya. He has shared the stage with some of the most important salsa singers in the world: Oscar de León, Rey Ruiz, El Grupo Niche, La Orquesta Guayacán, Celia Cruz, among others.
“I had the privilege of directing the clip” Santiago Cuna y Pan “performed by Dagoberto Planos with the company of the” Orfeón Santiago “and in that shoot I saw one of the most jovial artists I have ever met. Please offer our sincere condolences to your family and friends. Your charisma and voice lifted to heaven will be missed during the carnivals in Santiago and eastern Cuba, ”said Tarradell.
In the 1990s, one of the songs of the Karachi Orchestra “Señores bailen Butterfly”, by the then director Porfirio Mariol Sagarra, was among the first places of national popularity.
The group’s sound is heterogeneous as it includes genres such as boleros, guarachas, cha cha cha, sones of all kinds, danzones, latin jazz or ballads. Planos Despaigne was one of three vocalists who formed the group.
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