Celia Cruz: The spice, and spirit, of salsa music craze

Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 07:10:00 GMT
Newsgroups: soc.culture.cuba
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------------- Celia Cruz: The spice, and spirit, of salsa music craze
By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY
Celia Cruz, the Cuban-born Queen of Salsa who popularized Latin music around
the globe, died Wednesday at her home in Fort Lee, N.J. Cruz delighted audiences with her colorful costumes.
AFP
The iconic singer, 78, had surgery in December for a brain tumor, but her
health continued to decline, and she fell into a coma on Tuesday.
Credited for enticing mainstream audiences to salsa music, Cruz lit the fuse
of a Latin craze that persists today. She launched her career in 1950 as the
singer for popular Havana band La Sonora Matancera, regarded as the Latin
equivalent of the Duke Ellington Orchestra. The group defected before Fidel
Castro seized power in 1959, and Cruz never returned to her homeland.
In 1962, she moved to New York and married trumpeter Pedro Knight, her
manager until the mid-'90s, when he became her musical director. Knight,
along with Cruz's close friends, was at his wife's side when she died.
Cruz left La Sonora in 1965 to pursue a solo career in a band assembled by
Tito Puente. Her celebrity soared in the '70s when a new generation of
Hispanics discovered her music.
Cruz rose from meager beginnings to reign over a golden era of Latin music,
a genre formerly dominated by men. She grew up in a poor Havana household of
14 children. Her father encouraged her to become a schoolteacher, but Cruz
gravitated toward music and tagged along with an aunt to cabarets and
nightclubs. After singing in school productions and winning talent shows,
she entered Cuba's National Music Conservatory in 1947 to study voice and
piano.
Upon receiving the Hispanic Heritage Awards lifetime achievement honor at
Washington's Kennedy Center in 1988, Cruz said, "I have fulfilled my
father's wish (for me) to be a teacher as, through my music, I teach
generations of people about my culture and the happiness that is found in
just living life. As a performer, I want people to feel their hearts sing
and their spirits soar."
Cruz's music, preserved on more than 70 albums recorded since the 1950s,
spanned generations, races, languages and borders. A flamboyant and
energetic performer, Cruz wore vibrant costumes and wild wigs while belting
Spanish tunes peppered with shouts of "Azucar!" (Spanish for sugar). Her
signature polka-dot dress landed in the Smithsonian's permanent collection.
Cruz won a Grammy for tropical Latin performance (Ritmo en el Corazon) in
1989 and a Latin Grammy for best salsa album (La Negra Tiene Tumbao) last
year. She also received the National Medal of Arts and an honorary doctorate
from Yale University. She portrayed a nightclub owner in the 1992 movie The
Mambo Kings.
Frequent collaborator Ruben Blades told the Associated Press: "Celia Cruz
could take any song and make it unforgettable. She transcended the material.
... I don't think you could hear anything she did and be indifferent."
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