Gloria Estefan, a career of rhythm and hits


Gloria María Milagrosa Fajardo García was born in the Cuban capital, Havana, on September 1, 1957, just over a year before the Cuban Revolution, led by Fidel Castro, ended the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in January. 1959. His mother was a preschool teacher, and his father, a police officer, worked as a bodyguard for the dictator’s wife.

After the Castro victory, his father was arrested. He does not have many memories of the island, the American television network CBS published in 2017, since he left it when he was two years old: “I do remember, however, when my father, just after the revolution, was imprisoned. I remember going to jail with my mom and grandma to visit him.” He was released, according to the network, three months later.

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Gloria Estefan and her husband, music producer Emilio Estefan. (EFE/EPA/NINA PROMMER)

On American soil with “very Cuban” aging

Already on US soil, his father was part of the failed invasion attempt, in which Cuban exiles participated, organized and backed by the CIA, of the Bay of Pigs, known in Cuba as Playa Girón. After spending just under two years in jail, he returned to the United States, joined the US Army, the family moved to Texas, and he was sent to the Vietnam War.

“When dad came back from Vietnam he was very sick after being exposed to Agent Orange,” the singer told The Guardian in 2013. “Then he developed multiple sclerosis and I took care of him.” It was a situation, she said, difficult to handle. “But he made me stronger and music It was my escape.”

His upbringing, he told USA Today in 2020, was “very Cuban” because his parents’ initial plans were to return to the island. “I grew up with Cuban traditions, Cuban food, music Cuban music and a lot of other music too, because my mother really was an incredible singer,” she said.

Estefan enrolled at the University of Miami, where she studied Communication, Psychology and a minor in French, hoping to become a psychologist. At that time she met Emilio Estefan, who later became her husband. “We met at a mutual friend’s house,” she told USA Today.

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Music producer Emilio Estefan and his wife, singer Gloria Estefan announcing the opening of an Estefan Kitchen chain restaurant in Kissimee, near Orlando, in 2019. (EFE/GERARDO MORA)

Emilio, her husband and their first band

A few months later, she attended a wedding with her mother where Emilio’s group was playing and they met again, she told CBS News. That day she got on stage with them. She then joined the band; they later became a couple and eventually married in 1978.

Miami Sound Machine’s first album, “Live Again/Renacer”, was released in 1977; “Imported” was released in 1979. Later the band signed with CBS Records International and released a self-titled album in 1980. In 1981 “Otra Vez” was released and a year later “Rio”. In 1983, “Full speed ahead”; “Eyes of Innocence”, already with another record label, in 1984 and, in 1985, “Primitive Love”, which contained the great success “Conga”. The group’s last album with Estefan’s voice, “Let it Loose”, was released in 1987.

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Cuban-American singer Gloria Estefan at the 2018 Lo Nuestro Awards for Latin Music. (EFE/GIORGIO VIERA)

After the accident, “learn not to take anything for granted”

Shortly after, Estefan embarked on her solo career, with a first album called “Cuts Both Ways”, from 1989. In March 1990, she had an accident. She was on the tour bus, on a sofa in the front, taking a nap. Her husband was talking to her brother, and their son, Nayib, in the back with his guardian, when a truck hit them.

Estefan was paralyzed. “They said: You probably won’t be able to have another child. Because that was my plan after that tour. And she says, I hope you can at least walk carefully, but I don’t think you’ll ever be able to get onstage again. And then she said to me: I can tell you that it is up to you.”

The rehabilitation was long and painful, according to the Daily Mail in 2008. “But despite the accident, I felt a strange relief that it had happened so that I could learn not to take anything for granted,” he told the media. “I also discovered that he had a lot of discipline and patience that I didn’t know I had.” Estefan returned to the stage and became a mother again, although not without difficulties resulting from the accident. In 1994 her daughter Emily was born.

In the 1990s, he released several albums, such as “Into the Light”, “Mi Tierra”, “Abriendo Puertas”, and “Gloria!”, among others. Already in the 2000s, other works such as “Alma Caribeña”, “Unwrapped” and “90 Millas” were released. In 2011 he released “Miss Little Habana”, “The Standards” two years later, and seven years passed until his next album, “Brazil305”, his last to date and presented in 2020.

The artist has been nominated twelve times for the Grammys; in three of them she took the golden gramophone home. She also has four Latin Grammys to her credit. In 2016, still under President Barack Obama, Estefan and her husband received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

“My mother was watching from home and Emilio’s parents had already passed away, but I knew my father would have been incredibly proud, because he brought me to the US to raise me in freedom,” Gloria Stefan told USA Today.

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