Sawt Falasteen - Afro-Peruvian singer Susana Baca hospitalized in Lima

Baca, a three-time Latin Grammy Award winner, is 79 years old.

"Susanita is very delicate, she is in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in the Edgardo Rebagliati Hospital, where the medical team is doing its best for her recovery," Baca's husband Ricardo Pereira said in a statement, without specifying the nature of her ailment.

Baca, an icon in her country and popular in the United States and Europe, was discovered and signed to the Luaka Bop label three decades ago by David Byrne, former lead singer of the Talking Heads.

She won the Latin Grammy for best folk album in 2002 with "Lamento Negro" and again in 2020 with "A Capella." In 2011, she received another Latin Grammy for Record of the Year for "Latinoamerica," her collaboration with Puerto Rican group Calle 13.

In an interview with AFP, Baca once compared her role in bringing Afro-Peruvian music to the international stage to the contributions of icons such as Cape Verdean Cesaria Evora and South African Miriam Makeba.

Her latest album, "Epifanias," was nominated in the best global music album category for the Grammy Awards handed out in Los Angeles this month.

In 2011, she became the first Afro-Peruvian to hold a ministerial post, but left the culture portfolio after just months to resume touring.

A.AlHaj--SF-PST