The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 189

ny gBorv "MiTiflai iitiiirriirifcriiTii TUESDAY JUNE 22 1993 THE MIAMI HERALD 5E Estefan sings tribute to homeland Gloria Estefan Mi Tierra Epic Forget everything you thought you knew about Gloria Estefan a new Gloria singing on Mi Tierra her first solo all-Spanish album I know what thinking: ALBUM REVIEW when you consider that all the songs here are originals written by Estefan her husband Emilio and other notable Latin songwriters They capture the sound of yesterday and wrap it in the recording technologies of today The musicianship is exquisite: percussions (not a drum in the batch) from Sheila Tito Puente and Luis Enrique acoustic guitar by master guitarist Juanito Marquez horns by Arturo Sandoval flute by who else? Nestor Torres lush strings from the London Symphony and bass by Israel Lopez the man credited with inventing the mambo There a bad song in the set but two deserve special mention: Hablemos El Mismo Idioma Speak the Same Language is plea for Hispanic unity And Tradicion Tradition a killer guaguanco brings back the rebel voice of the Cuban ghetto MARIO TARRADELL Herald Staff Writer All the songs on i Tierra are tributes to the Cuba of the 1930s and 40s brimming with nightclubs that catered especially to dance music her Cuban homeland In fact all the songs on Mi Tierra are tributes to the Cuba that was Cuba of the 1930s and brimming with nightclubs that catered especially to dance music That music had couples dancing all over the island whether on the wood floors of popular clubs where you could find the elegance of the danzon or on the street comers of Havana where the guaguanco with its heavy percussions and vocals was bom even more impressive How different can a Gloria Estefan performance be? heard her seemingly endless array of syrupy ballads Anything For You Always Tomorrow and probably lost hope that Estefan could ever turn in another sassy delivery like Conga or 1 Rhythm Is Gonna Get You Well think again and then listen to this 12-song set Right off the bat be struck by the purity of contralto as she gently caresses the tropical ballad Con Los Ahos Que Me Quedan With the Years Left In Me) or rips through the fierce beat of the title cut an homage to hard work has brought feel so much more free and she says see that time will pass and things will Get the bottom line on Sooth Florida banks and Read Business Monday In The Miami Herald the way I love and the way I argue and everything very Cuban My heart is THE SEARCH IS ON ffi i rv a HELP US FIND THOSE PERSONS WHO BEST SERVE THE SOUTH FLORIDA COMMUNITY ESTEFAN FROM IE was telling Miami Herald publisher Dave Lawrence going to have to do something evil to get rid of this goody Estefan says with a laugh funny to me no saint a normal human being love doing good things I think we all should But a little devil in all of Right now the devil is curled on a leather couch in the control room of the studio at Estefan Enterprises Fittingly where she recorded Mi Tierra her first Spanish-language album as a solo performer i A voice of riches 'r' I The album is perhaps not' coincidentally one of the best (things she has ever done 12 songs sung in a contralto rich like Dove bars dark and smoky like some dive Her voice is a seduction a place where mysteries hide V' wanted to do this for a long long Estefan says yvas kind of caught in a Catch-22 because although I had Spanish albums before with the Miami Sound Machine the English albums in Latin America sold -even more than the Spanish They want to hear stuff in English too" The idea she says was not to simply do American pop with a Spanish face hip-hopping the rhythms and translating the lyr- ics Rather she wanted the music to be authentic to sound like something that might have been heard in Cuba during the was 3 years old when I started Estefan says first songs I learned on my guitar were from my grand-smother who was my only audience And they were songs from i the and in Cuba i reason we did new songs rather than do standards was because we wanted to bring something of us to this project So we thought write these songs but write them in the style of Cuba in the and And even the words we used and the way things are phrased and the subject matter' was very much something of the time We wanted to capture the era and dp something special something we would enjoy something that would show people the Roots It is a telling choice of words are some observers who grouse privately that Estefan has forgotten hers They point to a song like Coming Out of the Dark as evidence that Gloria is no longer Cuban enough A balancing act Yet on the other side of the ledger are the folks --the ones who see her as an ambassador of all things Cuban For them she is the Xavier Cugat or Ricky Ricardo of her day the emblem of a aspirations in a society that tends to lump all Spanish speakers together in a confused cultural stew of sombreros castanets and plantains i She walks a narrow ledge above a slippery slope feel pressured to act any certain she says life is what you see: I have a wonderful family very supportive of me and for me a very nurturing Estefan says those who claim I she has watered down the Cuban-ness of her music never i understood her music in the first place Aside from an occasional Conga here and there she says her music has always been more mainstream American than Cuban pretty much she says -Yet the record company ad writers have tagged Mi Tierra the I album she was born to sing and for once there is some truth in advertising Gloria bom in Cuba came to the United States in -1 960 shortly after Castro seized power still have my Pan Am ticket roundtrip -v Making a new life Some of earliest memories are of growing up in what she calls a community of women wives and sweethearts of the men fighting and imprisoned in Cuba were here in an apartment behind the Orange Bowl all the women with their kids- No husbands One car that cost $50 pile us all in the car and i go do the The grocers she says spoke no Spanish None of the women spoke any English The children Estefan says were all but oblivious to the tur-i moil had fun I know my 1 mom went hungry but I never did Whatever food there was I would get it We suffer as kids because we were being insulated by our Gloria says that even then entertainment government law medicine social services sports volunteerism and other vital areas The most important quality the judges will be seeking in nominees is a dedication to excellence in their fields and the result brought about by that good work We invite you to nominate that special citizen by writing to us now for a nomination form The 1993 awards will be presented at a special dinner in September to about six winners who have performed at the highest level of competence and also inspired excellence in others The Miami Herald is seeking nominations for its Charles Whited Spirit of Excellence Award which was established to honor those South Floridians who have helped make our community better for all or us these extraordinary people are your neighbors your business associates your friends through church school and civic organizations They can be from Dade Broward Palm Beach and Monroe counties They may have a high profile or perhaps they're not widely known They can be achievers in any field the arts architecture business communications education there were signs of the career path she would ultimately take mother says the only way she could get a diaper on me was to sing to me She played music all the time retards from v- Gloria has a photograph of herself from those years that shows a tiny girl in a cowboy hat squinting hard into the camera as though it contains answers to the riddle of existence She was she says a very serious child A very burdened one too After her father joined his family in the States he volunteered to serve his new country in Vietnam He returned from Southeast Asia ill with what Gloria suspects was a service-related affliction It became job to care for her father while her mother worked life was school and she says was it I felt very old I felt mature and Marriage and career It until she graduated from high school and her father went into a VA hospital that the burden eased She took her first boyfriend and married him He was of course an ambitious young go-getter named Emilio Estefan The rest as they say is history although folklore is probably the more appropriate Word Emi- lio Miami Latin Boys band became Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine And then just Gloria Estefan pop star Her journey from obscurity to the international stage captured South imagination and its heart But would probably say the journey that took place within was just as gratifying if not more so feel so much more free and she says now tend to have the weight of the world on your shoulders You see that time will and things will Seeing the funny side Estefan says enjoying her adolescence now about 20 years late but worth the wait Humor she says was almost as important as medicine in her recovery from the near-fatal 1990 bus accident in which she broke her back Of course humor is a lot like beauty: where you find it Gloria found it in the toy-makers who kept trying to talk her into marketing a lookalike doll thinking can you imagine what people would be doing with these little dolls? crash Gloria! Uh oh Gloria broke her back! operate on Nq she giggles People are like that I would do that the first thing I would She even finds amusement in Coming Out of the Dark the gospel anthem that celebrated her return got mugged in the she sings to the melody of her hit song thought be had a knife now and pointed at me I got mugged and it smarts Thank God the cop that saved me was walking that She mean to offends Certainly she knows the song means a lot to people it means a lot to her And yet a funny she says got to Mi Tierra is the one thing she laugh about at least not yet For now the album is too close the things it represents too Tresh With this music she gives herself to the embrace of her culture With this record she comes home know if my age that getting to she says I have a real deep love of all things Cuban I say that I have an American head and a Cuban heart the way that I feel I mean I think very much along the lines of the Anglo mentality in our work ethic and the way that we do things in our organization We want to try to be the best that you can be and compete on a world scope But in my heart and in my music and in my way of life and PAST WINNERS ARE: Hon William Gladstone Dr Barth A Green Dr Pedro Jose Greer Jr Jesse Holt Jr Major Douglas Hughes Wayne Huizenga Dewey Knight Nancy Allison Knox Robert McCabe James McLamore Dr Ralph Millard Jr Helen Muir Stanley Myers Eduardo Padron Ph Dennis Pastrana Dr Jean Jones Perdue Hon Thomas Petersen Lourdes Palacio Aguila Carlos Arboleya Georgia Ayers Charles I Babcock Jr Roberta Rymer Balfe -Edmund Frank Benson Luis Botifoll Ernie Bell Roxcy Bolton Dr Carl Brumback Ralph Carbone Ruther Mae Carter Armando Codina Gloria and Emilio Estefan Martin Fine Ron Fraser Hon Seymour Gelber Otis Pitts Jr Edna Mae Potter Athalie Range Margaret Roach Monsignor Agustin A Roman Donala Shula Dr Walton Smith Charlotte Spungln Frank and Mary Toro Alice Wainwright Monsignor Bryan 0 Walsh LIFETIME ACHIEVERS: Alvah Chapman Marjory Stoneman Douglas Dante Fascell William Lehman Elizabeth Virrick I would like to nominate someone for The Miami Herald Charles Whited Spirit of Excellence Award Please send me a form Name- Street Zip City Work Phone Home Phone Mail to The Miami Herald office nearest you: Spirit of Excellence Awards Spirit of Excellence Awards Community Relations Community Relations The Miami Herald The Miami Herald One Herald Plaza 1520 Sunrise Blvd Miami FL 33132 Ft Lauderdale FL 33304 mum.