Cuban singer-songwriter, Silvio Rodríguez, has received an Honorary Doctor’s Degree from the Cuban Art University, better known as ISA.

At the ceremony attended by Culture Minister, Abel Prieto, the Rector of the higher educational institution, Alexis Seijo, pondered the importance of the degree only bestowed upon personalities of very outstanding academic, cultural or social careers. This is the third time that Rodriguez receives a doctorate: the first one by the Universidad Mayor de San Marcos of Lima, Peru, in 2007. Three years later, the University of Veracruz in Mexico granted him the degree, and in 2011 he received the distinction from the National University of Córdoba, Argentina.

Silvio Rodríguez, Noel Nicola and Pablo Milanés established the New Song Movement at the end of 1972, an esthetic-musical trend that influenced popular Cuban music in the following years. In 2010 the musician and singer began a project called Gira por los Barrios (neighborhood tours) under which he has held 83 concerts in least-favored neighborhoods in Havana and other Cuban cities.