GLORIA ESTEFAN

TURNING THAT BEAT AROUND

“FOR SO LONG AIDS HAS LOOMED OVER US AND CAST THIS DARK CLOUD, AND TOOK AWAY THAT PASSION AND FREEDOM. BUT AIDS IS NO LONGER A DEATH SENTENCE. THERE IS A LOT OF HOPE ON THE HORIZON NOW, WHICH THERE WASN’T A FEW YEARS AGO. IT’S TIME THAT WE TRIED TO RECOVER THAT HOPE. IT WOULD BE A SHAME TO LOSE THAT SPIRIT... WE’VE BEEN THROUGH SOME REALLY DARK TIMES AND NOW IT’S TIME TO FEEL GOOD AND PARTY ON INTO THE MILLENNIUM – PARTY IN A GOOD WAY, NOT WITH DRUGS, BUT WITH MUSIC AND CELEBRATION – AND JUST HAVE FUN.”

WITH AN AUBURN TWIST AND SOME BLONDE HIGHLIGHTS ON HER ONCE-DARK TRESSES AND LOOKING FLITTER THAN EVER BEFORE, ESTEFAN IS BEAMING THESE DAYS. HER FIRST ALBUM IN TWO YEARS, “GLORIA!,” HAS JUST BEEN RELEASED AND IS THE SINGER’S MOST UPBEAT AND HER BEST ALBUM TO DATE. IT IS ALSO HER MOST INNOVATIVE RECORDING. ON IT, THE EVER CHANGING POP DIVA REINVENTS HERSELF, BRINGING A FRESH FLAVOR OF DISCO-INFUSED DELIGHTS, WITH A *90S TWIST TO THE MUSICAL ARENA.

“IT’S TOP TO BOTTOM DANCE. THERE ARE NO BALLADS.”

It’s very much what I am feeling right nwo, which is about partying to the millennium,” says the 40-year old singer. “I’m very much in a party mood. I wanted to re-ignite that feeling of the ‘70s – those innocent times when sex was still not a death sentence, before all the danger. I wanted to capture that feeling with the cutting edge of the ‘90s.”

“Gloria!,” is also uniquely a continuous play recording, with some of today’s hottest remix producers adding their vision to the project, including Tony Moran, Soul Solution, Love To Infinity, the Fugee’s Wyclef Jean and Pablo Flores. “The remixes are the album. There are no other versions,” she says. “We walked a very fine line on this one. We wanted it to be something people could listen to and dance to, so we kept it very close to that pop / dance edge. Usually people remix after the song is produced, but we produced those tracks the first time around on here. It’s really amazing.”

The album’s first single, “Heaven’s What I Feel,” is a welcome arrival in clubland, where the disco bunnies have embraced it as the summer anthem they’ve been clamoring for since Cher’s “One By One.” Although the set’s second track, “Don’t Stop,” is equally as fierce and exquisitely introxicating.

“Gloria!” is poised to be Estefan’s most successful album yet. Epic Records is launching a major campaign behind the new set, including heavy promotion on VH1, the 24-hour cable music network, and a new, nearly unrecognizable retro-glam look for Estefan. She doesn’t plan to tour again, however, until 2000. Her recent stints in New York, first as part of a divas concert with Donna Summer and Chaka Khan, and then as part of the recent sold-out divas concert in New York with Arehta Franklin, Mariah Carey and Celine Dion, haven’t hurt either. She’ll also participate in VH-1’s storyteller’s series and be part of a live program, on which viewers can phone in their song requests.

“I’m over being called a diva. I am diva-stated,” she jokes. “I’m diva-fied, diva-ed out, and over divadom. Singers like Aretha are really the divas.”

Still, call her what you may, she’s earned the right to be called one. In the last 13 years, Estefan has knocked out 13 major label recordings, including this one and three with the Miami Sound Machine. (Her and husband Emilio self-produced six others prior to their 1985 Epic debut). Eight of those releases have sold more than one million copies to earn
multi-platinum status. The singer also scored 11 top 10 pop singles, five of which were certified gold, and was named Billboard’s number one dance artist in 1996, with nine consecutive top five singles.

“Glroia is an amazing singer and performer,” says Dion. “She’s trly magnificent and has a lot of energy. I admire her and consider her to be one of the best out there.”

Born Gloria Fajardo in Havana, cuba, Estefan moved to Miami when she was two years old, where she grew up surrounded by the sounds of traditional Cuban music. At age 17, while attending a wedding with her mother, she met Emilio, the man who would change her life. Four years her senior, Emilio persuaded her to join his singing group, The Miami Laitn Boys. Though she had her sights set on a career in psychology she agreed. In 1980, the group changed its name to the Miami Sound Machine, with Gloria at its helm. Over the next few years, the group would release several independent Spanish language recordings. Fame began to show its face in the mid-80s, when Gloria and Emilio traveled to Puerto Rico and hired Pablo Flores, then a DJ in an underground gay bar there, to remix their song, “Dr. Beat.” Flores’ sterling version of the song became a top-selling import and put the singer on the dance map. (Flores still works with Estefan, including on her new opus.) The song went to number one all over Europe and Latin America. In 1985, the band struck true gold as its first commerical single “Conga” landed in the top 10 of the pop charts. Their Epic Record debut, “Primitive Love,” sold through the roof, eventually selling more than three million copies in the U.S., four million worldwide.

“The club people put me on the map.”

“The gay community and the dance community are the ones who really latched on to us and made us who we are. With ‘Conga,’ it was the gay clubs that made it a hit before anyone else.”

The band released two more albums, “Let It Loose” and “Cuts Both Ways,” which have each sold more than three million copies. But with Gloria’s name now preceding the Miami Sound Machine’s, the group decided to break-up, allowing Gloria to fly solo. But a car accident soon after nearly killed the singer and almost ended her career. With a steel rod permanently in her back and daily workouts, “they call me robopop,” she jokes, Estefan skyrocketed back, making a remarkable recovery and tackling a world tour a year later. The life altering experience also served as the inspiration for the multi-platinum “Into the Light.”

In 1994, Estefan went retro, releasing “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me,” a high-energy collection of pop covers, which featured her chart topping infectious remakes of “Everlasting Love” and “Turn the Beat Around.” For the video of the latter track, the singer who was eight months pregnant, decided to use drag queens to impersonate her and lip-synch to her unmistakable voice. While the real Gloria is never seen in the video, it’s hard at times to tell who’s who. Her 1995 Afro-Cuban release, “Abriendo Puertas,” spawned two number one dance songs, including the title cut and “Tres Deseos.”

Now with “Gloria!,” the enigmatic singer goes deeper into the dance trenches to create an exhilerating and saucy dance set. Originally, Estefan was not planning to record an album of new music. The idea was to put out a remix compilation. But not too logn into the process, Gloria decided it felt right to record an entire fresh release. She wanted to create an album that harked back to her days with the Miami Sound Machine and her early dance roots on such notable hits as “Conga” and “Dr. Beat.” The result is Estefan’s most exciting and daring project from a creative standpoint.

“We thought it would be fun to revisit the Miami Sound Machine days – that sound – and use everything we learned along the way. It’s very much the sound heard on the ‘Conga’ rhythm, with a ‘90s twist,” the singer says. “This is the first time it’s been the same sound from top to bottom. It’s a fusion of many styles, but with a dance motif.”

The project also gave her a chance to work with an array of remixers and producers from all walks of the musical spectrum, including Wyclef Jean and Tony Moran.

“Tony really has a great vision and knows how to make things work,” says the singer of Moran, who produced five of the album’s tracks, and co-wrote “Don’t Stop,” with Emilio. “It usually takes weeks or months for a singer and producer to find their voice together, but Tony captured it immediately. His ideas and arrangements were just extraordinary. He knows what he wants vocally and how to bring it out in me – things I wouldn’t have thought of on my own.”

It’s obviously a mutual admiration. “Gloria is incredible to work with. Her passion and commitment is amazing and it’s easy to work with someone like that,” says Moran, who recently signed a exclusive deal with Gloria and Emilio’s publishing company, Estefan Enterprises.

As for Jean, Estefan was amazed at the jeep-soul sensiblity and distinctive rap style he brought to her “Don’t Release Me.” “We worked from 10PM until six int he morning, remixing and remixing in his vibe, whcih is usually much slower paced,” she says. “It worked so well.”

Much of the inspiration behind the new album is Estefan’s desire to celebrate the coming of the millennium, as well as her reemergence at 40 as a woman. “It’s about everything I feel at this point. I’ve come to enjoy so much and I with my daughter almost four, I feel like I am reemerging as a woman,” she says. “As a woman I feel extremely satisfied. I feel I’ve come full circle in my life. I’m very confident with who I am. As a woman, I’m ver fultifilled. This record reflects that. I want to celebrate that.”

Except for giddy, retro-splashed “Touched By An Angel,” the tracks on the album are all about love and passion, two important consistencies in Estefan’s life. It’s also about capturing the carefree essence and energy of the 1970s – a time long forgotten by today’s generation. “The ‘70s were about a freedom that a lot of people have forgotten about – the days of Solid Gold and Dance Fever, and a sexual exploration and freedom that people don’t know about today and never experienced. This album is about recapturing that feeling of freedom and celebration and living life,” says Estefan.

GLORIA ESTEFAN GREETS YOU LIKE AN OLD FRIEND SHE HAS KNOWN FOR YEARS, WITH VIBRANT BUOYANCY THAT’S BOTH REFRESHING AND INVITING. LESS THE BALL OF THE FRENETIC CUBAN ENERGY THAT SHE IS KNOWN FOR, THE TWO-TIME GRAMMY WINNER IS A DIFFERENT BALL OF FIRE OFF STAGE. FUNNY ENGAGING, HER IRREVERENT WIT CAN SEND A ROOM INTO LAUGHTER THE MINUTE SHE SLIPS A ZINGER, WHICH SHE IS QUICK TO DO OFTEN.

“For so long AIDS has loomed over us and cast this dark cloud, and took away that passion and freedom. But AIDS is no longer a death sentence. There is a lot of hope on the hoizon now, which there wasn’t a few years ago. It’s time that we tried to recover that hope. It would be a shame to lose that spirit.”

Of course, no Estefan recording would be complete without at least one Latin-infused track. On “Gloria!,” she offers up two of them – “Oye,” and “Cuba Libre.”

And when all is said and done, the spiritually evolved singer hopes people take away a feeling of hope and cheer moving into the next century. “We need to regain that feeling of optimism and spirituality. I really want people to walk away with a positive, good feeling,” she says.

“We’ve been through some really dark times and now it’s time to feel good and party on into the millennium – party in a good way, not with drugs, but with music and celebration – and just have fun.”

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