Celia Cruz: life and musical legacy

Celia Cruz is one of the universal values of humanity. Her talent and love for music, her sense of rhythm and her special voice made her conquer a the world of salsa that was belonging to men only. She attracted large audiences both in Latin America and in the United States. She was called "queen of salsa" and she earned that title with her driven spirit and achievements.

Celia Cruz was born in Cuba, probably in 1925, in working-class family. According to her own account of her life, her whole name was Ursula Hilaria Celia Caridad Cruz Alfonso. She was born on November 21, in the wet season. She was the second child of six. Four of them survived childhood. The Cruz family lived in a modest home, in a poor neighborhood, with other cousins and aunts, but Celia Cruz remembers only the warm atmosphere in her parents' house coming from the love she felt around her.

Havana was the right place to be born when you have talent, voice and a great sense of rhythm. At the age of fourteen, Celia Cruz attends her first carnival in Havana. She is recalling the memories from back then when she was ready to do anything to be able to listen to the music and dance on it. "the colors, the music, the sense of energy, and living life to its fullest potential were very intoxicating. I remember the euphoria I felt when we walked back home that night. We had to walk because we didn't have enough money for the bus ride back. It was the longest and best walk of my life" (Cruz, Reymundo, 21).

The radio brought Celia Cruz out of her neighborhood and gave her the chance to start singing for the whole world. She won a contest at a radio show in the 1940s singing the tango Nostalgia. In the 1950s began singing with the band La Sonora Matancera at the most famous Cuban nightclub, Tropicana. She staid on the stage for the next fifty years. She lived her country after Castro came to power and never came back. Cuba was the perfect land for Celia Cruz to be born in, or she was perfect for Cuba. She inherited the inimitable joie de vivre and the love for dance and music from her countrymen. She also had the privilege to grow up and listen to Paulina Alvarez, Fernando Collazo, Abelardo Barrosso, Arsenio Rodrigues etc. (http://americanhistory.si.edu/celiacruz/main.asp?lang=awM2165144125tGkA)

Her work at the radio gave her the opportunity to meet "choreographer and producer Roderico Neyra, who hired her for the famed musical "Sun Ba Bae." She joined the female dance group Las Mulatas del Fuego as their singer and traveled throughout Latin America" (idem).

Celia Cruz confesses in her autobiography that as a child she used to attend as many shows of Paulina Alvarez as she could. Alvarez was her idol and model and Cruz's first performance at the radio show contest for amateurs, she sang accompanied by claves, an instrument consisting of two wooden sticks that are used to set the rhythm by clapping them. The claves were Alvarez' trademark; she was pictures everywhere with them in her hand. Years later, she will get the chance to share the stage with her, at Tropicana.

Celia Cruz was not only crowned as the queen of salsa music, but she also became a symbol for the Afro-Cuban and Latin music, generally. She was called La Guarachera del Oriente and La Reina Del Rumba, among many other titles (Ruiz, Korrol, 179).

She was an excellent improviser and she kept her vitality and vocal qualities throughout her long carrier.

When she joined the band Sonora Matancera, not only was she the first female vocalist of the band that was formed in 1932 and although many thought she was never going to be a success, she proved to be "its greatest alumni" (answers.com).

The name "Guarachera de Cuba" she earned for the guaracha Cao, Cao, Mani Picao, her first song recorded with Sonora Matancera. The total of songs they recorded together was 185 and they toured throughout Latin America and then came to the U.S. where she continued to sing with the band until 1965 (Smithsonian, National Museum of American Hisitory). It was a member of the band she fell in live with and eventually married: Pedro Knight. The ceremony was performed in Connecticut in 1962.

Her unique style and singing performances were the result of her talent revealed through hard work. Tropicana was the place where she got the chance to perform in some famous musicals. "This was the perfect place for Cruz to develop her "bigger-than-life" sense of style and aesthetics" (idem).

Cruz did not need much time to win the hearts of the audiences in the U.S. First, the Latinas and then all those who enjoyed Latin music were conquered by her talent and ability to adapt to any kind of audience and to find a common ground they could both relate to. "Before long, her strolling, metallic, very African rhythms, from Santeria religious chants to cha-chas, mambos, and salsa- punctuated with shouts of "!Azucar!" had made her the idol of Latinas all over America, catching on a bit later among anglos" (Novas, 319). Her star was shining high up in the sky and not before long she became known and admired all over the world.

Celia Cruz' way to the U.S. went through Mexico. This country embraced her with enthusiasm and here she had numerous appearances on stage, live on television and radio shows and in films. Mexic offered her another opportunity to meet famous singers and composers and to record with them. Se recorded, among others, with the composer Pedros Vargas. In 1961 she came to New York. The city was another of those perfect places for musicians like her (Smithronian, National Museum of American History). There she met giants like Tito Puente, the Puerto Rican bongo player, who will also leave an important mark on her interpretation. He is said to have "shaped Latin music into its present-day amalgam of salsa, Afro Cuban sounds and Latin jazz" (Novs, 319). The two talents met and sang together, played in the film the mambo Kings and they are now in the same constellation of the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Cruz' carrier never went down again. Twenty three of her more than seventy albums became golden albums. She won two Grammys, starred in theaters and films, received different kind of other honors and awards and in 1195 received the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton (Novas, 320). Being the first Latino singer to receive this honor, Celia Cruz proved that her talent and love of life and people were the best advocates for a successful carrier.

She performed on some of the most prestigious stages in the world. "In 1973 Cruz sang at Carnagie Hall in the role of Gracia Divina in Larry Harlow's Hommy -- a Latin opera, an adaption of the rock opera, Tommy, by the Who. It was during this time that salsa music was revitalized in the United States" (Musicianguide).

Like Paulina Alvares who had her claves as her trade mark, Celia had the shout "!Azucar!" that preceded her onstage and in presentations about her. She explains in her autobiography that her trade mark has nothing to do with Alvares and it is related to an episode in Miami where she admonished a Cuban waiter who asked her how she wanted her coffee. "!Azucar!" is one of the trade marks for Cuba and maybe it is not by chance that Celia Cruz ended up shouting the word in her unique and impressive voice, every time she entered the stage.