The month of February is Black History Month. In celebration, IQLatino is featuring Afro-Latino leaders every week, honoring their accomplishments and contributions to society as well as their rich Afro-Latino identities. Check out last week’s feature on Miriam Esther Jiménez Román, pioneer of the Afro-Latino studies movement, here. This week, we honor the life and legacy of the Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz.
Celia Cruz was born in Barrio Santos Suarez, Havana, Cuba, in 1925. Although her father wanted her to become a teacher, Cruz was drawn to music from an early age, singing in school productions, community gatherings, and for tourists on the island. During her teenage years, she performed in cabarets and enrolled in Havana’s National Conservatory of Music, studying voice, theory and piano. Her rise to fame began when she competed on a radio show contest called “The Tea Hour,” where her voice caught the attention of influential musicians and producers. She was eventually hired as the singer for Las Mulatas Del Fuego, a dance group with whom she traveled and performed throughout Latin America. In 1950, she became the lead female singer of Cuba’s most popular orchestra, La Sonora Matancera, becoming a star on the island.
In 1960, Cruz was touring Mexico in concert as the Cuban Revolution raged back home. As a result, she decided not to return to the island and moved to New York, where she married her friend and trumpet player Pedro Knight. Fidel Castro, enraged by Cruz’s move from the island, barred her from ever returning to Cuba. She never again returned to her homeland.
In New York, Cruz joined the Tito Puente Orchestra in the 1960s, a group central to the development of the new genre of Salsa music, born of Cuban and Afro-Latino mixed musical tradition. In 1974, she joined the record label “Fania,” and she recorded her first studio album, “Celia y Johnny,” which included her signature song “Quimbera.” During the next decades, she would become one of the few women to succeed in the male-dominated Salsa world, becoming an international star in her extraordinary 60-year long career.
Over the course of her career, Cruz recorded over 80 albums, earned 23 Gold Records, and won five Grammy Awards. She also participated and appeared in several documentaries and Hollywood movies, including the famous 1992 “The Mambo Kings.” Her name sits in the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and she was awarded the American National Medal of the Arts by President Clinton. In 1994, she was inducted into the Billboards Latin Music Hall of Fame and in 1999 into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame.
Celia Cruz passed away in 2003, at the age of 77, but her legacy is immortal. In 2005, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History opened the “Azucar!” exhibit, paying homage to key moments in Cruz’s life and music. Her trademark orange, red, and white polka dot dress and shoes are displayed in a permanent collection. In 2011, she was honored by the United States Postal Service with a commemorative postage stamp, joining only four other Latino musicians in this tribute.
Throughout her life, Cruz was a pioneer of the Afro Latinidad, embracing the African elements of her identity in her music, lyrics, and famously flamboyant dress. She remains a beloved artist, the Queen of Salsa, throughout every corner of the world. In a 1997 interview, Cruz commented on her life and career: “I have fulfilled my father’s wish 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,” she said.
