La Lupe never seemed to second-guess herself onstage. The Afro-Cuban singer — who died 30 years ago this week, on Feb. 29, 1992 — was infinitely watchable, unafraid to kick and howl and twitch, as if the music were sending electric jolts throughout her body. In Cuba, where she headlined nightclubs in the early 1960s, she enthralled novelists like Ernest Hemingway and Guillermo Cabrera, both of whom wrote about the rhapsodic fury that seemed to overtake her when she sang. Her first husband Eulogio Reyes once said that the first time he saw her perform, he thought she was having an epileptic fit. She was explosive and unpredictable, like a dozen fireworks going off at the same time.
La Lupe was born Lupe Victoria Yoli in the eastern Oriente province of Cuba. According to some accounts, she snuck out of school when she was 19 to enter a local singing competition and won with a…
