Omara Portuondo could be any Cuban grandmother, if that grandmother were a world-famous singer with tales to tell (and keep) about 60 years of music and celebrity and separation. Sequestered in a downtown Miami hotel, this legend of Cuban music, elegant and consummately professional at 79, wears a spangled black headscarf for photographs on a rare day of interviews. Her feet, however, are nestled into white athletic socks and flat, cork-soled sandals. When she sings -- and she sings several times -- the room seems to vibrate with the emotion in her voice.

``There is no beautiful melody where you don't appear,'' Portunondo sings softly on Contigo en la distancia (With you in the distance), a famous Cuban romantic song. ``It's just that you've become a part of my soul.''

Portuondo is part of Cuba's musical soul, a diva of the island's golden age, former dancer and singer at the famed Tropicana Club; a pillar of the filin movement of sentimental song and a founding member of Cuarteto D'Aida, the beloved female group of the 1950s and '60s. More recently, she was the only female member of the Buena Vista Social Club. Her rendition of the bolero Viente Años brought the heart-tugging power of classic Cuban song to millions around the world.

``My parents taught me that song when I was 8 years old,'' Portuondo says and breaks into spine-tingling melody again: ``With what sadness we watch our love ebb away; a little piece of our soul is mercilessly torn away.''

Portuondo's little piece of Cuban soul was torn from the exile community 50 years ago. For some, that split was widened in 2003, when, even as dozens of writers and dissidents on the island were imprisoned, Portuondo became one of many artists to sign a controversial letter of support for the Cuban government.

Portuondo is reluctant to discuss the letter. ``Everyone doesn't have to know why these decisions are made,'' she says. ``Many, many artists signed that.'' Asked whether disagreement was possible, she says simply, ``You don't do that.''

But such political divisions have diminished recently. In October, Portuondo become one of the first Cuban artists since 2003 to be given a visa to perform in the United States, playing concerts in San Francisco and Los Angeles. On Thursday she will break another barrier as the first artist from the island to appear as a presenter on Univision's telecast of the Latin Grammys; her latest album, Gracias, is nominated for Best Contemporary Tropical Performance.

This trip has also let Portuondo renew personal connections. She was in Miami to visit her sister Haydee, who was also part of Cuarteto D'Aida but who left Cuba in 1965. Portuondo says the loss of her sister's presence has been difficult, but she does not assign blame.

``My sister and I were always together since we were little -- family is family,'' Portuondo says. ``It was very hard, very painful -- but that's how it is.

``What is there to say? We were always together in everything. But she made her decisions, and these are things you have to respect, even if it's your sister, or your mother, or whomever.That's your decision. Everything costs something in life.''

Whatever its costs or rewards, Portuondo's life has certainly had a dramatic trajectory. The singer's mother scandalized her well-to-do white family by marrying a famous black baseball player. Omara broke into show business in 1945, when a dancer at the famous Tropicana cabaret dropped out of a new show that included Haydee, and the girls' parents convinced their younger daughter to step in.

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