Cruz, Celia

Cruz, Celia , Cuban salsa singer; b. Havana, Cuba, Oct. 21, 1924. Considered by many to be the “Queen of Salsa,” she is a feminine icon in a notoriously macho field. She has been performing for well over four decades, but her voice transcends matters of age, however, and while not quite as flexible in the 1990s as it was during her artistic heyday in the early 1950s, Cruz has proven that she still carries surprising power in her singing.

In 1950 she became the lead singer for Sonora Matancera, one of the leading Cuban orchestras of the time. This was the start of her “classic” period, when she was cementing her reputation as the most popular female singer in Cuba. Her recordings from the period she spent with Sonora Matancera (until 1965) were originally released through Seeco Records and some have been reissued through Palladium and PolyGram Latino. It was also during this time that Cruz and the band left Cuba for a tour that never made it back to their homeland, applying for residency in the United States when they were able to secure a long-term gig at the Hollywood Palladium. Cruz had a commercial down-turn from the mid-1960s through the early 1970s as the Latin audience turned to newer Latin styles like bugalu.

By the mid-1970s she was making the climb back into popularity with a performance at Carnegie Hall in 1973, and a series of releases with Johnny Pacheco that were big sellers within the Hispanic community. By the late 1980s, her role as “Queen of Salsa” was the real deal. She received an honorary doctorate degree in music from Yale in 1989 and her album with Ray Barretto (Ritmo en el Corazon) won a Grammy Award in 1990, the same year her star appeared on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She has also made cinematic appearances in the movies the Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love and The Perez Family. Cruz’s later albums on RMM still carry some Latin-jazz punch but, in general, they target salsa fans.

Discography

Ritmon en el Corazon (1988); La Dinamica Celia Cruz (1991); Canciones Premiadas (1994); Irrepetible (1994); Homenaje a los Santos (1994); The Best of Celia Cruz (1994); Las Guaracheras de la Guaracha (1994); Mi Llaman la Reina (They Call Me the Queen) (1996).

—Garaud MacTaggart