Musician Immigrants

Welcome to this new edition to our Musician Immigrant series, a developing collection of articles talking about those who left their homelands to experience a culture outside their own, making musical contributions that serve to enrich and inspire us.

Spotlight on Gloria Estefan

With the dominating subject of the current news--little Elian Gonzalez--in mind, I want to talk about a native Cuban who did in fact make it to the dry shores of Miami, but who never forgot her homeland, a truth we can hear in her music. The musician is Gloria Estefan.

Entitled as the "Queen of Latin Pop," Gloria Estefan is the most successful crossover artist in Latin music history, with over 45 million records sold.

Born Gloria Fajardo on September 1, 1957 in Havana, Cuba, her family escaped to Miami in 1959 when Fidel Castro took over the country. Two years later, her father took part in the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion. He got caught and was incarcerated for a year and a half. After his return to the United States, he joined the army and served two years in Vietnam, where he was exposed to Agent Orange, which may have contributed to the disease he was diagnosed with upon his return, multiple sclerosis.

Being the oldest kid in the family, Gloria took care of her father while her mother was working. In order to find some relief and comfort, she took to playing the guitar and singing, two gifts that came naturally to her. Before she became more involved with music, she studied psychology and completed her B.A. in the subject in 1978. At the same time, Gloria was occasionally performing with a band called the "Miami Latin Boys," led by keyboardist Emilio Estefan, the man she married in 1978.

Later on, the band was renamed "Miami Sound Machine", and they soon began producing albums. During their first years, they were known among the Hispanic population in the USA, especially in Miami, but also toured several countries in Latin America. Their first four albums were all in Spanish, and therefore not very well-known to the English-speaking audience. In 1984, the B-side track "Dr. Beat" became a big dance hit in Europe, and made it to number 10 in the U.S. dance-charts. It wasn’t until their follow-up album in 1985, "Primitive Love" with its single "Conga" that the band had its breakthrough. The song was a big success and a true crossover phenomenon, topping the pop, dance, R&B, and Latin charts simultaneously.

Over the next few years the band tapered off, new members joined and it became known solely as Gloria Estefan. In 1989 she released her first solo album called Cuts Both Ways, with two songs that reached number 1 in U.S. charts. In 1990, Gloria was almost killed in a bus crash while on tour. She suffered a broken vertebrae, and in a hour-long surgery they inserted a permanent titanium rod to stabilize her spinal column. With will power and tremendous support from her fans, she managed to get back on her feet within a year, and announced her recovery with a new record and a world-tour.

It is remarkable how she managed to attract audiences from the Spanish as well as the English language group. With the release of her 1993 album Mi Tierra (my homeland), she paid tribute to her roots by recalling Cuban music of the 1930s and 40s. Her bonds to the Cuban community in the U.S. have earned her the name nuestra Glorita (our little Gloria). Estefan sees herself as a product of both cultures: "People told me at the beginning, 'You're too 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." (T. Drummond and A.M. Pascual).

For her 1995 all-Spanish album Abriendo Puertas (Opening Doors), she earned a Grammy for Best Tropical Latin Performance. One highlight of her career could be considered her performance of the Grammy-nominated song Reach at the closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996. An estimated one billion people tuned up to watch her performance. Comfortable in both languages, Gloria Estefan re-wrote Reach in Spanish, emphasizing that it is more than just translation of words. "... it's a different feeling," she remarks. "You can't just switch on and off from one language to the other." (T. Drummond and A.M. Pascual).

Her acting debut on the big screen came along last year in Music of the Heart, alongside Meryl Streep, in a story based on the real life of Roberta Guaspari-Tzavaras, the music teacher who founded the East Harlem Violin Project.

At 42, Gloria Estefan can already look back on a extraordinary career with remarkable achievements. She managed to combine the elements of her Cuban background with her American upbringing and to attract an audience from both cultural groups.

We're glad Gloria made it to shore and that she brought a bit of Cuba with her.

Next Page: A Brief History of Gloria's Homeland
                                                                               

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