Gloria Estefan

Going for

Gold

With her anthem ‚Reach’ the singer closes the Games – and captures the Olympic spirit

To say that Gloria Estefan’s career is going well these days is an understatement. Her new album, Destiny, is soaring toward the top 10. She’s embarking on a year-long, worldwide concert tour, highlighted by an HBO special in September. And on August 4, she will be singing the official anthem of the Olympics, “Reach,” live at the closing ceremonies of the Atlanta Games in front of a TV audience of tens of millions. But all Estefan wants to talk about during a rehearsal break in Pensacola, Florida, is her 19-month-old daughter, Emily.

“Do you know what she did today?” Estefan beams as she scoops up her ringlet-haired tot. “She looked out the window of our hotel room and pointed at the concert arena and said, ‘Mamí va a cantar!’ That’s Spanish for ‘Mommy’s going to sing.’ She’s already making the connection between big round buildings and her mom. It’s amazing.”

During the next year, Emily can count on seeing a lot more of those big round buildings. The Destiny tour is Estefan’s most ambitious yet. She has been rehearsing for more than a month in the Miami Arena with a 21-piece conglomeration of musicians, Afro-Cuban dancers, and a assortment of drag queens to boot – a nod to her growing number of gay fans. Now the singer, and her husband and manager, Emilio, have moved the whole circus, plus Emily and son Nayib, 16, to Pensacola for one last week of fine-tunning. Estefan hasn’t been on the road like this since 1990, when a horrible bus accident almost paralyzed her.

“Part of me wonders why we’re doing all this,” says the 38-year-old singer, whose dramatic story is told in Lifetime’s Intimate Portrait: Gloria Estefan (July 31, 7 P.M./ET). “But I figured that this was a good moment – Emily’s small enough that I’m not pulling her away from anything that she loves at home, and at the same time, my fans have waited a long time. Also, I want to eventually slow down. It’s like being an athlete: You have your peak moment, and if you’re lucky you get several peaks, which I’m fortunate to have had. But after a while, I just want to settle down and enjoy being home.” She chuckles, and flexes a sculpted bicep. “While I have the energy, I’m gonna go out and do this.”

The Olympics, as it turns out are a particularly appropriate place for Estefan to launch this comeback. “My songwriting partner, Diane Warren, and I had been asked to contribute something to the Rhythm of the Games LP,”explains Estefan. “She came up with one word, just a title: ‘Reach.’ Well, that one word threw me back into when I was recuperating from my accident, and every single day I had to talk myself into getting out of bed, talk myself into starting the therapy routine ... a constant reaching for something, a constant attempt togo beyond. I realized there was a very strong analogy between my struggle and the struggle of athletes in Olympic Games, and that made it more personal.”

The accident wasn’t the first struggle Estefan faced in her life. Her family fled Castro’s Cuba when she was about as old as her daughter is now. They went to Miami, where she mastered a new language and culture. She married Emilio in 1978 and he helped her transform herself from a shy teenager into a confident, successful singer. Then, in 1990, just as Estefan reached the brink of pop superstardom, came the bus crash – and the operation that left two 8-inch steel rods in her back. After her recuperation, she decided to pay homage to her Cuban roots with two albums of Cuban and Latin American songs in Spanish. The recordings, Mi Tierra and Abriendo Puertas, earned her the Grammys – and the critical acclaim – that had eluded her in the mainstream market.

With Destiny, Estefan has blended her Latina and American sides into bicultural pop, singing in English, but with arrangements and melodies that springs from Cuba and South American traditions. “I have my mother to for keeping me in touch with my Cuban roots,” says Estefan, who is doing the smae for her children. She will speak to Emily only in Spanish until she starts school. “It seems more natural that way. Spanish is the language of the heart. I want the kids to be bilingual.”

As she lowers Emily from her lap to let her toddle around the arena with Nayib, Estefan smiles contentedly. “Right now, at this point in my life, I’m feeling such joy,” she says. “To be able to go onstage and get loved, by thousands of people – how lucky is that? And the best part is to come back from that and have my family around. I know it’s too sweet, it’s almost sickening. But I’m really, really happy.”

© All rights reserved by TV Guide 1996

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