Maria Ochoa was born on Sept 23, 1944 in Gran Piedra (Alto Songo, Santiago de Cuba), the daugther of the artistic marriage of Aristonico and Jacobina, both singers and treseros of these intricate mountains who transmitted a profound love of Cuban music to their six children. Maria's childhood memories are characterized with improvisation, singing and demonstration and inclination for art along with her brothers.

In 1968 she became part of the radio program « Trinchera Agraria » which was directed toward the peasants (farmers) since the program's inception in 1963. She has enjoyed participation in the different festivales del Son, Festivales de la Trova « Pepe sanchez », festivales de la Musica Campesina, festivales de la Cultura Caribena. these appearances has allowed her to become a recognized artist to the general public, especialy in the Easternn part of the island (Santiago and guantanamo).

In 1993 she began o work in the famed performance hall, Casa de la Trova, in Santiago as a faithful exponent of the peasant genre while promoting a representative repertoire of the people who work the land.

On the 9th of September of that year, she formed her own 6 member ensemble in order to demonstrate the possibilities of this particular type of art form. Their incursion into the traditional music, although themselves identified with the genre of guajira developed this hotness domain freely and with the cheerfulness of the a party whose cuartetas (quartets) and decimas (metric combinaison of 10 octosyllabic verses) reflected the lives of the Cuban peasant.

In 1993 Maria Ochoa was invited by her brother, Eliades Ochoa and the Cuarteto Patria to participate in a musical tour to Venezuela and again in 1998 to Barranquilla, Colombia where they added the outstanding artitsts of the renowned Buena Vista, Omara Portuondo. She gives a dedication to this musical craft by offering the personal tone of her voice to represent the most indigenous repertoire of campesina music.