(Prensa Latina - Cumbancha) Havana, Cuba - More than 20 artists from 11 countries will participate in the 18th Golden Boleros Festival, to be held June 10-26 in Cuba, dedicated this time to Brazil. Organizing Committee President, musicologist Jose Loyola announced Tuesday in a press conference that bolero followers and researchers from Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Italia, Peru, Japan, Spain and Argentina will join the Cubans in the Festival. The guests confirmed so far, Loyola stated, include Venezuelan Elena Gil, Mexicans Raul Neri, Nayra Luna and Mari Carmen Pérez, and José Luis Monero, one of the most popular bolero singers of Puerto Rico. Italian Paola Lorenze, Ecuadorian Maria Esther Bowen, Spanish Angel Cuenca, and Peruvian Felix Silva Fernández (Betico),  will also attend the Festival.

Monserrat Perdomo, Kener Garcia and Jair Rodriguez will represent Brazil. In previous editions of the Festival, bolero figures such as Puerto Ricans Danny Rivera and Andy Montañez performed. This year's festival will open June 10 in the province of Villa Clara, 287 east of Havana, and then extends to Camagüey and Santiago de Cuba, before coming to Havana on June 23. Meanwhile, an international colloquium with 24 speakers from six countries will take place, including lectures on bolero and the identity of our America, and Brazilian popular song. Two special dissertations, one by Colombian Pablo del Valle, and another by Brazilian Ilza Nogueira, on the evolution of the music genre in Brazil, will be main attractions. Book presentations, concerts, discussions and the premiere of two documentaries, one of them dedicated to late Cuban singer Compay Segundo, are included in the Festival program.

The closing ceremony will pay tribute to nine Cuban musicians, including Marta Valdes and Roberto Sanchez, on their 70th birthday. The Cuban Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC), the Ministry of Culture, and the Cuban Music Institute sponsor the Boleros de Oro Festival, created "to promote one of the eldest Cuban music genres."