Rubén Rada, born in Montevideo on 16 July 1943 and known across Uruguay simply as el Negro, was a singer, percussionist and composer whose career ran for six decades. He joined El Kinto in 1965 alongside Eduardo Mateo, and that group is credited with creating candombe beat, setting the Afro-Uruguayan drumming of candombe against electric guitars and a drum kit with lyrics sung in Spanish. He carried the same idea into Tótem between 1970 and 1973, mixing candombe with rock and Latin music.
In the decades that followed he kept fusing candombe with jazz, funk, murga, samba and bossa nova, and took it far beyond the Río de la Plata. The Latin Recording Academy gave him its Premio a la Excelencia Musical in 2011. He died in Montevideo on 26 August 2026, aged 83. His daughter, Julieta Rada, is a singer too.