From a Cuban Heart

Thanks to glorious Gloria Estefan,
the appeal of Latin pop knows no borders

When one-year old Gloria María Fajardo and her family left Cuba for America, Cuba never really left them. After President Fulgencio Batista was overthrown by Fidel Castro in 1959, the Fajardo family fled Havana, buying $21 round-trip tickets, because Gloria’s father, José Manuel, had been a motorcycle escort for the wife of the Cuban ruler. Once in the U.S., José Manuel become restless, itinerant, dreaming of Cuba. He participated in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and was thrown into a Cuban prison. Released after 18 months, he later went to Vietnam with the U.S. Army, was exposed to Agent Orange, developed multiple sclerosis and died in 1980. Gloria used to send her father tapes of her singing when he was away. He once sent back a tape with a message, “One day you’re going to be a great star.”

Many fathers have such wishes for their daughters, but José Manuel’s came true. Little Gloria grew up to become Gloria Estefan, and she is indeed a great star, having sold 45 million albums worldwide. Her latest record, Destiny, is off to a fast start in Europe and Latin America, and the first single, Reach, has ridden its status as an official theme song of the Atlanta Olympics to international popularity. Estefan, whose allure knows no borders, was a logical choise for her Olympic role. “Because of her universal appeal,” says Louis Cunningham, marketing vice president of Atlanta Centennial Olympic Properties, “it’s natural that Gloria had the first Olympic single to be released.”

LEGACY

The multiplatinum singer still holds a return ticket to her native land: “I can’t even see where I was born.”

But global singing star or no, Estefan, 36, still has the unused portion of her round-trip ticket from Havana to Miami. Even ash she chats, relaxed, in the tw-story mansion she shares with her manager-husband Emilio on Star Island in Miami Beach, she thinks of Cuba, “mi tierra.” She says mournfully, “I can’t even see where I was born.”

There were two ways the immigrant could assimilate into American life. One approach was to embrace mainstream culture, to sitcoms, the Coca-Cola, the straigt-ahead pop music and, of course, the English language. The other way was to assert her own heritage and compel the rest of America to taste her spices, to dance to her Afro-Cuban grooves. In two decades in the music business, Estefan has mixed it up with Americans in both ways.

In 1975 Gloria met Emilio, who invited her to join his soon-to-be-renamed Miami Latin Boys after hearing her sing at a wedding (the couple married three years later). The re-baptized Miami Sound Machine had modest success during its first decade, performing its Spanish-language music in packed stadiums in Central America and Puerto Rico. But in Miami it was strictly a wedding-reception and bar-mitzvah act – until the group made a 1983 Spanish-language record that included a catchy song in English called Dr. Beat. “Somehow it got exported to Europe and became the No. 1 dance hit,” recalls Estefan. Only after conquering the top of the charts in England and Holland did the song double back and become a hot seller in the U.S.

SOUL MATES

Emilio made a good move in 1975 when he hired his future wife to sing for the Miami Latin Boys.

Springboarding off the success of Dr. Beat, the band produced two English-language albums, Eyes of Innocence (1984) and Primitive Love, the following year. The latter included a song called Conga, a fast-paced number driven by bongo and conga drums. It was an instant hit, and the band had its entrée into the big time. “All of a sudden Gloria’s sound was refreshing and unique, and it was also danceable,” says Angela Rodriguez, Latin marketing manager for Billboard magazine.

From the mid-1980s on, Estefan’s work with the Miami Sound Machine consisted mostly of processed American-style dance music seasoned with punchy Latin rhythms. “She was the first to take Latin-influenced music, the heavy percussion sounds, mainstream,” says Jon Secada, a singer-songwriter who has worked with Estefan and gone on to solo success of his own. Primitive Love sold 2 million copies, the next album, Let It Loose (1987), 4 million, and Cuts Both Ways (1989), 10 million.

Then tragedy struck in 1990. A semitrailer slammed into the tour bus in which Estefan was traveling, knocking her unconscious and breaking her back. Doctors inserted two 20-cm-long steel rods into her spine. She narrowly escaped paralysis, and the recovery was arduous. Yet less than a year after the accident, Estefan was back onstage – singing and dancing – for a 29-country world tour. Says Jorge Casas, Estefan’s longtime bass player: “That alone should give you an idea of how incredibly driven and hardworking she is.”

Something had changed, though. Estefan’s music became more reflective. She returned to her roots, singing the Spanish-language songs her grandmother sang to her when she was a child. Her 1993 album Mi Tierra (My Homeland) her first Spanish recording in 10 years, consists of songs – five of them written by Estefan – that recall Cuban music of the 1930s and ‘40s. The album was a smashing success, selling more than 8 million in the U.S., where it topped the tropical/salsa charts for 18 months and won a Grammy Award. The 1995
follow-up, Abriendo Puertas (Opening Doors), also in Spanish, brought in the music of other Latin American contries and sold more than 2.5 million copies.

The two discs enhanced Estefan’s international stardom, generating red-hot sales in Europe and much of Spanish-speaking Latin Aermica. In Spain, the land of Estefan’s ancestors, Mi Tierra has sold 1.2 million albums and Abriendo Puertas 1 million; in the past two years, she has even outsold Spanish crooner Julio Iglesias.

Estefan is a crossover star who was able to cross back. “People told me at the beginning, ‘You’re to Latin for the Americans, too American for the Latins,’ “ she says. “But that’s who I am. I’m Cuban American; I’m not one thing or the other. I have an American head and a Cuban heart.” Destiny is a product of this bicultural soul. The title song features the gentle sound of a classical guitar, accomplanied by harp, viola and cello. Reach contains moments of mature reflection between the big sing-along, go-for-the-gold choruses.

“Destiny is a synthesis of everything that we’ve done in the past five years,” says Estefan. “We’re offering the same Spanish flavor to our English-speaking fans with words that they can understand.” The perfectly bilingual Estefan is one of a handful musical stars who can pull that off: she is comfortable writing lyrics in both languages; in fact she rewrote Reach in Spanish. “But it’s a different feeling,” she remarks. “You can’t just switch on and off from one language to the other.”

These days the singer has no shortage of projects. Her appearance at the Olympics was scheduled in the midst of her 10-month “Evolution” world tour. “I’m not the same person I was 10 years ago,” says Estefan. “After Mi Tierra I could never go back to doing the same old thing.” Estefan’s Destiny, as her cheering fans confirm, lies in the growth and maturation that has taken her artistic journey onward.

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Many, many Thank You’s to Osvaldo from Argentina for the scan of this magazine!!!

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