Soraya (musician)
Colombian-American singer-songwriter
Soraya Raquel Lamilla Cuevas (March 11, 1969 – May 10, 2006) was a Colombian-American singer-songwriter, guitarist, arranger and record producer.
A successful Colombian music star, she had two number-one songs on Billboard's Latin Pop Airplay charts. She won a 2004 Latin Grammy Award for "Best Album by Songwriter" for the self-titled album Soraya, which she produced, and received a 2005 Latin Grammy Award nomination for "Female Pop Vocal Album" for her album El Otro Lado de Mí (literally "The Other Side of Me"). She was the opening act for the 2005 Billboard Latin Music Awards. Her career spanned ten years, and she recorded five albums.
Soraya died on May 10, 2006, following a long struggle against breast cancer.
Biography
Early life
Soraya Raquel Lamilla Cuevas was born in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, to a Colombian father and a Lebanese mother, a year after her father, mother, and brother moved to the United States from their native Colombia. The family moved back to Colombia when she was a baby, but when Soraya was eight years old, they returned to New Jersey. "Soraya" is a common name in the Middle East, and its meaning can be translated as "Pleiades". Soraya's maternal relatives were Lebanese Christians who emigrated from Lebanon to Colombia.
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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 Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q273614. VIAF identifies the subject as 59296148. The Library of Congress control number is n2003077627. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969, 2006, 2004 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Soraya (musician)” 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.