Aresounding contralto voice, incredible improvisational skills, and a career spanning more than five decades have gained Celia Cruz the epithet of “Queen of Salsa.” The African-Cuban singer has recorded more than 75 albums and worked with every top salsa band.
Cruz was born on October 21, 1924 in Havana, Cuba. While she was training to be a teacher, a cousin persuaded her to enter a radio talent show, in which she won first prize. Cruz began her music career singing on local radio stations, and soon decided to dedicate herself full-time to music and enrolled in Havana’s National Conservatory of Music.
In 1949, Cruz joined the dance troupe Las Mulatas de Fuego, with whom she toured throughout Mexico and Venezuela. A year later, Cruz joined the popular orchestra La Sonora Matancera and performed with them for 15 years, recording a long list of albums that included such hits as “Burundanga,” “Caramelos,” “La danza del Cocoye,” and “Cao Cao Mani Picao.”
In I960, after the Cuban revolution, Cruz left her home country, eventually finding a home in New York, where she made numerous recordings with some of the foremost Latin musicians of the day. She collaborated on seven albums with the Tito PUENTE Orchestra, but sales were disappointingly poor.
In the early 1970s, however, a salsa boom hit New York, as young Latinos rediscovered and celebrated their roots, and at last Cruz was launched into stardom. In 1973, she sang the part of Gracia Divina in Larry Harlow’s opera Hommy, the Latino version of THE WHO’s rock opera Tommy, at Carnegie Hall. The following year, the tropicalismo singer started working with flautist and percussionist Johnny Pacheco, and their first album together (Celia and Johnny, 197’4) earned them a gold disc. Pacheco also played with Cruz on the 1976 hit “Cucula.”
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Cruz worked with trombonist, singer, and producer Willie COLON, who helped her broaden her repertoire to include such Brazilian and Puerto Rican compositions as “Berimbau” and “Bemba colora,” with which she regularly signs off her live performances. Cruz also toured with the legendary Tito Puente and the Fania All Stars, completed more albums with Pacheco and Colon, and worked with singers Cheo Feliciano, Santos Colon, Ismael Quintana, and Adalberto Santiago on Puente’s three-volume tribute to Cuban singer and bandleader Beny MORÉ, Homenaje a Beny Moré (1978, 1979, and 1985).
By the late 1980s and early 1990s, Cruz was an established superstar in both the Americas. In 1990, she won a Grammy Award and, in the same year, became only the second Latin musician to receive a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. She collaborated with pop singer David Byrne—notably on “Loco de Amor” in the film Something Wild—and played cameo roles in the Hollywood films The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love and The Perez Family.
One of the biggest and most stylish voices Latin America has produced, Cruz has toured throughout the world, wooing audiences with her dazzling energy and warm sensuality, and promoting not only salsa but also the entire African-Cuban and Latin American tropical genre.
Alison Bay
SEE ALSO:
BRAZIL; CUBA; LATIN AMERICA; SALSA.
FURTHER READING
Ayala, Cristobal Diaz. The Roots of Salsa: The History of Cuban Music (New York: Excelsior Music Publishing, 1995);
Behague, Gerard H. Music and Black Ethnicity: The Caribbean and South America (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publications, 1994).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Homenaje a Beny Moré, Vols. 1–3; Azucar negra; Irrepetible; Irresistible;
with Willie Colon: Only They Could Have Made This Album; Brillante Best;
with Johnny Pacheco: Celia and Johnny, Tremendo cache; Recordando el Ayer;
with Johnny Pacheco and Pete “El Conde” Rodriguez: Celia/Johnny/Pete;
with Tito Puente: Cuba y Puerto Rico son…