María Teresa Linares is loved by all Cuban musicians, first because she was Argeliers León´s wife and both made a lot of contributions to Cuban music.  But also she is wise and beautiful. She is an example of life for everybody, how she is still working modestly, because I have always heard her saying that she still needs to study.
Maestro Robert Valera, composer and conductor.

There is no need to look for María Teresa Linares too much to find her. (…) She lives in this Island and she knows how to be worth in her place. Judging by all the time she has lived making good use of for more than eighty years, she always knew it.

Serene, from the depth of many nuances, she prefers to talk about herself by using the plural of her marriage with musicologist and Professor Argeliers León, always together till the end. He was my teacher, my conductor in life, the person who guided me towards my real and definitive vocation.   
CUBADISCO 2005, proudly review female presence within Cuban music, decided to award professor and musicologist Maria Teresa Linares the Honor Prize.  While she remembers that the CD has been with her for long time. 

In 1938 she began her relations with the record and Cuban recordings, when she began her working life as a sales clerk at RADIO PHONO CLUB Shop in Havana where, according to her own words, she had the opportunity of listening all that was recorded regarding popular and classic music, at least on Víctor´s Label. I made the same advertisement to all the products. I also found out about the performers and styles of this music in all genres.  Do you know how much they paid me? 15 pesos a month and 1% on sales. So to win 45 pesos I had to sell at least one hundred records, I don´t know how many albums, a record player that cost 400 pesos, a radio of 60 pesos and many other things. But I enjoy that lesson. I learned that a record transcends due to its cultural content, like a book, though it is commercially used to be sold. Then I began to respect it.

When she got to EGREM – from the Science Academy -, she had recorded two albums with songs before the Revolution and about the first years of it. Because Argeliers and I had a small tape recording and when we went on holidays to Santiago, the interior of Havana or Matanzas, we used to record peasants´ songs, the drumbeats of African descendants and many other things. I made a selection from there to cut the record Viejos cantos Afrocubanos which I prepared for an African Culture Congress organized by the Ethnology and Folklore Institute from the Science Academy, in collaboration with the UNESCO. The best Africanists of the world attended this Congress and we gave them this album as a gift.

(…) Because I never made a record just saying the names and family names of the artists and authors. I always explained, genre by genre, what it means, age and how much it represents to our culture; all kind of information that certify them. And all my records have been like that.  

I have been part of the juries from the very beginning of the contests and I have realized that it has been positively improved. CUBADISCO has made some recommendations to Companies which have taken them into account. Musicians are very interested in presenting good music and being awarded. Audience in general likes the program very much. The jury is diverse and it is fair, all provinces are included this year and there is an absolute ethics among all of us in order not to spread what we do, how we judge or what we find or not on records. When artists present a disk they know the jury makes a lot of discussions, analyzing every detail to evaluate the product, that is why the prize results are always very good.    

I consider that CUBADISCO has won positions at international levels, it is quite respected in Cuba and abroad and I am very satisfied to make contributions to its fulfillment.

I am very used to be loved and homage, but not to be separated as a woman. I believe women and men are compensation to each other.

We have moved forward in society thanks to a social process well developed, though there are still some things to do. Nevertheless, women have improved themselves intellectually, as mothers, wives and in all levels of the society.    

(…) María Teresa Linares, author of a wide bibliography, is determined to keep writing. (…)   

Fragments from an interview to María Teresa Linares by CMBF.