Alfredo de la Fé
Cuban musician
Alfredo Manuel de la Fe Díaz (born February 6, 1954) is a Cuban-born and New York–based violinist who lived in Colombia for more than 16 years and is responsible for adapting the violin to Colombian traditional dance music creating innovative Salsa and Latin American music. The first solo violinist to perform with a Salsa orchestra, De la Fe has toured the world more than thirty times, appearing in concert and participating in over 100 albums by top Latin artists, including Eddie Palmieri, Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, José Alberto "El Canario", Cheo Feliciano, The Fania All-Stars, Santana and Larry Harlow. His second solo album entitled Alfredo released in 1979 was a Grammy nominee for "Best Latin album".
A child prodigy, Alfredo's father who was a singer (a tenor of opera) in Havana, Cuba and sang on Cuban radio with Bienvenido León and Celia Cruz in the 1940s recognized his son's skills and encouraged his musical talent.
Early life
He was born in Havana, Cuba, to a family of musicians. De la Fe began studying violin at the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory in Havana in 1962. In 1964, he received a scholarship to attend the Warsaw Conservatory in Poland. In 1965, he performed compositions by Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in Carnegie Hall. A scholarship to Juilliard Arts enabled him to further his studies. De la Fe launched his professional career, at the age of 12, when he switched from classical music to salsa and accepted an invitation to join charanga musician José Fajardo's orchestra in 1966.
The public source identifies “Alfredo de la Fé” as cuban musician. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Alfredo, Cuban and musician.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q516919. VIAF identifies the subject as 4483513. The Library of Congress control number is no00096530. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1954, 1979, 1962 and 1964.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alfredo de la Fé” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.