Buena Vista ghosts follow diva Omara Portuondo

HAVANA, Mar 30 (Reuters) Omara Portuondo swears the ghosts of Compay Segundo, Ibrahim Ferrer and Ruben Gonzalez follow her wherever she sings.

And at 75, the surviving star of the Buena Vista Social Club has a hectic international touring schedule.

Last week the Cuban diva performed in Mexico. In April she will be in Colombia, followed by a six-nation European tour in July and August and on to Hungary in October.

''I miss them so much. They're always with me, on every stage,'' Portuondo said in her dressing room before a recent concert.

Her smoky voice and sad ''bolero'' ballads that tell of lost love recall Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf.

She was the only woman on the Buena Vista Social Club album recorded at a jam session with American guitarist Ry Cooder in 1996. It sold a million copies, won a Grammy and relaunched the careers of a group of largely forgotten musicians.

Named after a seniors-only social club in a western Havana neighbourhood, the album sparked a revival of world interest in traditional Cuban music, source of the rhythmic cha-cha and mambo dances in the heady days of 1940 and 1950s Havana.

The story of the musicians' late-life jump to international fame was told in 1999 by German director Wim Wenders in his Oscar-nominated documentary ''Buena Vista Social Club''.

Time has taken its toll on the band.

Its oldest member, guitarist and front man Compay Segundo, died in 2003 aged 95. Pianist Ruben Gonzalez passed away months later at 84. Singer Ibrahim Ferrer died last year aged 78. A week ago, singer and composer Pio Leyva died of a heart attack at 88.

As the curtain rises at Havana's National Theatre at a recent performance, Portuondo's sensual voice fills the auditorium. She steps forward gingerly, looking down to avoid tripping on a cable.

Her opening song is a soulful bolero, ''What's Left For Me to Live.'' 'JUST A LITTLE MULATTA' Portuondo was born in Havana in 1930 when the city was thriving on sugar wealth. Her mother came from a rich Spanish family and eloped with a black baseball player.

The petite Portuondo started out in show business as a dancer at Havana's famed Tropicana cabaret. In 1952, she formed a female vocal quartet called Las D'Aida that once opened for Nat King Cole at the Tropicana.

''I'm just a little Cuban mulatta who loved music since I was a girl,'' she said. ''I'm so happy to have the strength to continue,'' she added backstage, changing out of sneakers into high heeled shoes.

By the time Cooder invited her to join the Buena Vista project, Portuondo had a singing career spanning four-and-a-half decades that included countless recordings.

Unlike other veterans in the band, she was still singing in Latin America and better off than they. Ferrer was shining shoes while Gonzalez didn't even have a piano of his own and played at a ballet school for a living.

It was her duet with Compay Segundo of the bolero ''Veinte Anos'' (''Twenty Years'') on the Buena Vista album, however, that shot her to global prominence.

''Today, many people all over the world know me as a symbol of Cuban music, and I owe that to Buena Vista,'' she said.

Portuondo has recorded three solo albums, including ''Dos Gardenias'' (2001) and ''Flor de Amor'' (2004), and she has appeared as guest singer on a dozen more since her career was relaunched.

Her passport continues to fill up with stamps: Macao, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Seoul.

At every stop, she religiously sings ''Twenty Years''.

And misses Compay, his small hat and big cigar.

''Every time we went out on stage to sing the song, he would stand next to me and put his hand on my backside,'' Portuondo recalled.

''I would tell him, 'Compay, please, you know my back well enough'. But he was such a devil and we had the audience right in front of us. There was nothing I could do.'' REUTERS CH KP0909