Yusa is a Havana-born guitarist, vocalist, tres player, bassist, and composer, and one of the leading voices of 21st-century Cuban music. She blazed trails as a member of the all-women quintet Quasi Jazz, cementing her voice in the jazz-fusion world, and she is best known in Cuba as the original musical director of the popular band Interactivo. She was the first graduate of the famed Amadeo Roldán Music Conservatory to specialize in the Cuban tres guitar, and she signed to Tumi Music as a solo artist in 2002.
In 2003 she was nominated for the BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards in two categories, Best Newcomer and Best of the Americas. In 2008 she founded her own label, YUSA Music, on which she released her fifth album, Libro de Cabecera en Tardes de Café, in 2012. Her sound blends trova, son, pop, jazz, and Cuban and Brazilian rhythms into what one critic called "finally hearing 21st century Cuba."
Yusa relocated to New Orleans in 2020 and has been collaborating with many of the city's musicians ever since. She plays Snug Harbor, the Jazz Museum, and the Jazz & Heritage Foundation's concert series, often in partnership with the CubaNOLA Arts Collective, and she turned heads singing Joe Cabral's "Para Donde Vas" on the New Orleans Nightcrawlers' Grammy-nominated Too Much to Hold.
