lit a candle 6 Sept 2026Watched him on La Voz. Man had presence. Didn't just teach music, he taught you to feel it. Uruguay lost a giant.
Their story
Omar Ruben Rada Silva (1943-07-16 to 2026-08-26), known worldwide as Rubén Rada, Ruben Rada or El Negro Rada, was the musician who taught Uruguay and much of Latin America that candombe could walk with rock, jazz, funk, samba and plena without losing the street. Born in Montevideo's Palermo neighbourhood into…
Omar Ruben Rada Silva (1943-07-16 to 2026-08-26), known worldwide as Rubén Rada, Ruben Rada or El Negro Rada, was the musician who taught Uruguay and much of Latin America that candombe could walk with rock, jazz, funk, samba and plena without losing the street. Born in Montevideo's Palermo neighbourhood into a humble Afro-Uruguayan family, he contracted tuberculosis at age two and spent about two years at Saint Bois Hospital. His mother, Carmen María Silva, was Brazilian from Santana do Livramento; his father, Raúl Rada, a candombe drummer from the Ansina neighbourhood, left the family when Ruben was two. He grew up sharing a single room with his mother, siblings, aunt and cousins, and later said he attended six or seven schools and finished only through the fourth year of primary school.
Music arrived early. At ten he joined the Morenada comparsa under the childhood nickname Zapatito. As a teenager he sang murga with La Nueva Milonga, worked with Pedro Ferreira's Cubanacán orchestra, and by about seventeen fronted the jazz group The Hot Blowers as Richie Silver, singing English phonetically. In the mid-1960s he co-founded El Kinto (also El Kinto Conjunto) with Eduardo Mateo and others: among the first South American bands to fuse electric rock instrumentation with Latin percussion and to sing original songs in Spanish, inventing what became known as candombe beat. In the early 1970s he helped form Tótem, whose brief life left lasting tracks such as Dedos, Biafra, Heloísa and Negro. Mid-decade he joined Hugo and Osvaldo Fattoruso and Ringo Thielmann in the US-based jazz-fusion group Opa; their 1977 album Magic Time includes Montevideo, co-written with Hugo Fattoruso, which became one of Uruguay's emblematic songs. He also played and recorded around figures including Tom Scott, Ray Barretto, Hermeto Pascoal, Flora Purim and Airto Moreira.
A long Buenos Aires chapter in the 1980s made him a Rioplatense star with albums such as La Banda, La Rada, En familia, Adar Nebur and La yapla mata, and classics including Candombe para Gardel, Rock de la calle and Blumana. Economic pressure pushed him to Mexico in the early 1990s, where he opened for UB40 and Sting, worked as arranger and sideman, and recorded unreleased or delayed material including Rada Factory. Returning to Uruguay around 1995, he entered a mass-audience renaissance: Montevideo and Montevideo II went platinum at home and were issued internationally; Black and Miscelánea negra expanded the audience; Quién va a cantar (2000), produced with Cachorro López, delivered radio anthems Cha-cha, muchacha, Muriendo de plena, Quién va a cantar and Mi país, going quadruple platinum in Uruguay and gold in Argentina. He built a children's universe around Rubenrá, kept releasing genre-focused albums into the mid-2020s, and in later years toured with a band that included son Matías on guitar and daughters Julieta and Lucila on backing vocals.
Institutional honours matched the popular reach. He received the Morosoli de Plata for popular music trajectory (1995), was named Illustrious Citizen of Montevideo (2008), won the Latin Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award / Premio a la Excelencia Musical (2011), received Berklee College of Music's Master of Latin Music Award (presented during the 2015 Latin Music and Culture Celebration; Berklee's Master Musician Awards programme launched in 2013), and was awarded Uruguay's Delmira Agustini Medal (2014). In February 2020 Uruguay XXI named him Uruguay Country Brand Ambassador. Parallel careers in film, television and radio included the Rioplatense Spanish voice of Frozone in The Incredibles (2004), acting in Gasoleros and other series, and coaching on La Voz Uruguay and La Voz Kids Uruguay.
His personal life wove Afro-Uruguayan and Argentine-Jewish lineages. With María Fernanda Vivanco he had daughter Lucila (born Buenos Aires, 1981), an actress and singer. With psychologist Patricia Jodara Leizerovich, his partner for more than three decades and the woman family statements call wife, he had Matías and Julieta, both musicians. He spoke proudly of raising Black and Jewish children and of grandchildren including Salvador and Sofía. He remained publicly identified with Montevideo, Peñarol colours, and a stage persona equal parts virtuoso and comic storyteller.
Rada was hospitalised in Montevideo on 2026-08-04 with bilateral pneumonia. On Wednesday 2026-08-26 at about 15:30 local time, his family announced on his official Instagram that he had died at 83 after fighting pneumonia and its complications for a month. President Yamandú Orsi decreed official mourning for 2026-08-27; flags flew at half-staff; a public wake filled the Salón de los Pasos Perdidos of the Palacio Legislativo from 14:00 to 21:00. On 2026-08-28 a candombe cortejo left Isla de Flores and Santiago de Chile in Palermo / Barrio Sur for Cementerio del Norte, where he was buried in the AGADU pantheon. Artists across the Río de la Plata, from Jaime Roos and Jorge Drexler to Natalia Oreiro, Fito Páez, Rubén Blades and Daniela Mercury, called him a master of swing, humour and national identity. His own lyric from Muriendo de plena framed the farewell many Uruguayans tried to give him: remember him dancing, not only weeping.
Biography adapted from EN/ES Wikipedia Rubén Rada / Ruben Rada; AP Spanish (2026-08-26); TeleSUR English; Uruguay XXI farewell and Marca País ambassador pages; Berklee College of Music; Subrayado family statement reprint; M.
In their own words
“Con muchísimo dolor les comunicamos que hoy miércoles 26 de agosto a las 15:30 hs. se fue y ahora descansa en paz nuestro querido esposo, padre y abuelo, después de pelear un mes contra una neumonía y sus complicaciones.”
Family statement, Instagram @negrorada, 2026-08-26
“Cuando yo me muera no quiero llanto ni pena, yo quiero se me recuerde bailando una rica plena.”
Lyric from Muriendo de plena (2000); framed public mourning in 2026
“El homenaje se lo va a hacer la gente.”
Yamandú Orsi, mourning day press
“Ruben Rada es el mejor músico que ha dado este país, un cantante como el que no hemos tenido desde Gardel en Uruguay.”
Jorge Drexler, Canal 10 / Subrayado
“Se fue un pedazo del cielo del Uruguay.”
Jaime Roos press tributes; also called Rada his maestro y héroe
“Tenés hijos negros y judíos. El amor es el amor; vinimos a este mundo para amar, no para estar todos iguales.”
On family diversity, interviews retold 2026 (Caras / El Cordillerano)
“We are all Uruguayans, even those of us who are abroad.”
Uruguay XXI bicentennial framing, 2025
Photos
3Ruben Rada performing at Berklee Master of Latin Music award concert
by People Forever
Ruben Rada, Uruguay Country Brand Ambassador
by People Forever
Ruben Rada receiving Berklee Master of Latin Music Award
by People Forever
Same. His voice carried so much history.