At 95, Angela Alvarez is fulfilling a lifelong dream that began in her native Cuba, where she learned to sing and play the piano early on, and later took on the guitar and started writing her own songs.“I loved music very much,” Alvarez tells Billboard Español in a video-call from her home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana — where the work of her husband, a mechanical engineer in the sugar industry, took her decades ago.She decided to put her dreams on the back burner, eventually finding happiness in marriage and a family of her own.“I think that music is the language of the soul,” says Alvarez, who estimates that she has written around 50 songs, including “Romper el Yugo” (Break the Chains,) “Añoranzas” (Yearnings,) “Mi Gran Amor” (My Great Love”) and “Camino Sin Rumbo” (I Wonder Aimlessly,) all included in her 15-track, self-titled debut album, independently released (via Nana Album LLC) in June, 2021.As Angela was getting on in years without ever recording any of her work, he had an “epiphany” that made him fly quickly to Louisiana to document each and every one of her songs, for “the legacy of our family.” “I didn’t know there were so many, I had no idea,” Carlos recalls on the same video call, laughing as he recounts the conversation he had with his grandmother about finally recording those songs."