Her maternal grandmother, Consuela, was a
special inspiration. “She raised me. She was
my hero,” said Estefan in a 2019 conversation
with The Palm Beach Post. After arriving in
Miami at age 56 — and without knowing a
word of English — Consuela started an informal
Cuban street food business that would support
the family through hard times. Consuela’s
kitchen became a gathering place for the
Cuban community, and Gloria’s grandmother
encouraged the young girl to show off her
beautiful voice. “She would make me sing for
them,” said Estefan to the Post. “I would say
‘Abuela, I’m too shy. I love to sing, but I’m too
shy.’ She would say, ‘You have a gift. You have
to share that gift or you won’t be happy.’”
Decades after her first number one hit, Gloria
Estefan is paying that support forward by
helping up-and-coming Latino musicians
when guests who can’t tap out a meringue
rhythm kick up their heels to a routine with
blessedly few rules.)
For that song, Gloria decided to sing in English,
a choice that would help define her career. To
this day, she touts the way music can bridge
divides. “We really tried to keep our Cuban
culture, our Latin culture, alive in our music,”
she said during the recent celebrations for the
Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. “If I had to
leave only one thing behind, it’s the fact that we
are this cultural blend, which really represents
the greatness of this culture.”
That willingness to weave genres together
sometimes brought criticism, but Estefan
is prepared to defend the value of her own
approach. “At first everyone said it was
watered-down salsa,” she said to the Los
following in her footsteps. In June, Gloria and
Emilio Estefan joined the Latin Grammy Cultural
Foundation to award a $200,000 scholarship
to 17-year-old Spanish pianist Sergio de Miguel
Jorquera, a gift that will fund him through all
four years at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Angeles Times in a 1990 interview. “But it’s
more, not less. We have other options that
other people don’t try, and I happen to be
proud we’ve been able to bring it to them in this
form.” It’s proved a powerful blend, and one
that’s rocketed Estefan’s music to the top of the
charts again and again.
Estefan’s avid support of arts education guides
the work of the Gloria Estefan Foundation,
whose projects have included sending the entire
South Florida Youth Orchestra to perform at
Carnegie Hall in 2018. Speaking to an audience of
young women at the Maurice Gusman Concert
Hall earlier this year, Estefan doled out advice
to her ambitious fans. “Find something that
you’re passionate about,” she said. “Success is
not something that is easy. It really takes a lot of
hard work. You have to believe in yourself and
forget about negativity.” After sending conga lines across the globe,
Gloria’s husky croon launched the romantic
song “Words Get in the Way” to No. 5. In 1993,
the Grammy-winning, Spanish-language album
Mi Tierra paid tribute to her Cuban roots with
sounds pulled from the island’s traditional
bolero, son, and danzan sounds. She joined
“Queen of Salsa,” Celia Cruz for the 2000 single
“Tres Gotas de Agua Bendita,” then worked
with producer Pharrell Williams to craft 2011’s
super-danceable hit “Wepa.”
The music world the next generation of Latin
artists face has been transformed in the years
since a young Gloria Estefan made national
headlines fronting the Miami Sound Machine.
While it’s hard to recall in a modern era when
the pop charts are infused with Spanish samples
and cumbia-inspired beats, a bright line once
separated Latin sounds from mainstream,
English-speaking music radio in the United States. Due out later in 2019 is a continent-hopping
album of her own songs reinterpreted with
Brazilian beats and instruments. “I am so excited
about this project,” Estefan said to Billboard
last year. “We’ve taken our top hits and gone
to Brazil and re-recorded them in completely
Brazilian rhythms — some well-known, some not
well-known,” she explained. “We’ve been really
meticulous in making sure we celebrate the music
of Brazil in the right way.”
“The Estefans created the opportunity for pop
music with Latin rhythms to have a permanent
spot on the American musical landscape,” said
former Billboard Latin American-Caribbean
bureau chief, John Lannert, to AARP in 2013.
With Gloria Estefan’s contralto setting the
mood, Miami Sound Machine kicked open the
door in 1985 with the song “Conga,” which
wriggled its way onto dance floors around the
world. (Its legacy can still be felt at weddings,
In coming years, Gloria sees even more cultural
blending for Latin music, as a young generation
of artists enters a scene she helped to pioneer.
“I don’t think it’s going to become just about
Latino influences but will just be about
different kinds of genres coming together,”
she once said to Google Arts & Culture. “It’s
important for Latinos to continue telling our
story, be a presence in the U.S., and put our
culture out there.”
Gloria Estefan
Credit: Courtesy Crescent Moon, Estefan Enterprises Inc.
FLYWASHINGTON.COM 10 AUTUMN 2019