But it was necessary to dive into her formative period, where it started, developed and consolidated one of the most impressive careers that a Cuban singer or musician ever had. Celia herself avoided delving into her years in Cuba, and limited to essentially emphasizing her work with La Sonora Matancera. It is the least known in his career, the least studied, the least written about. Why did you choose to cover only her period in Cuba? That’s why in January 2018 I began this investigation. Our gaze as Cubans was needed and it was and is necessary to overcome the ostracism to which Celia has been condemned in her birth country. You know my line of work from my blog Desmemoriados – Historias de la Música Cubana: what I pursue is to overcome oblivion and leave information and assessments as correct as possible in a digital space, which several generations already recognize as their main source of reference.Īlthough there are several books about Celia, none is signed by a Cuban author, none is published in Cuba, which may be a debt to the most important and universally transcendent female figure in Cuban music. When and why did you start this research? What convinced you that you should do a book like this about Celia in these times we live in? On the other hand, she tried to weather the best she could -not always with success, not always effectively and I’d dare to say not always sincerely- the intolerance of those on both shores who were moved by political interests».Īdding up her two lives, inside and outside her beloved homeland, Celia became «a universal reference for Cuban music and an inspiration for Latin American and Afro-descendant women, as an ideal of self-improvement, effort and triumph.» In her epilogue, Marquetti Torres acknowledges that being «at the mercy of the most intransigent thoughts and tendencies of the two contending forces in the Cuban national conflict, her great internal struggle would lead her, on the one hand, to express, in the best way she knew, her patriotism, her sense of belonging and love for Cuba (…). The political dispute marked her life and ours. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, trained to be a teacher and owner of the most recognized female voice of Cuban music in the rest of the world, remains, however, an undiscovered reference for many Cubans on the island. The «Queen of Salsa», this woman born in Santos Suarez (Havana) and veiled in an apotheosis of love at St. These events ended up deciding Celia’s fate. The final outcome of this period was without any doubt her mother’s passing in Havana and the impossibility of her returning to Cuba to be with her, something Marquetti Torres investigated. «That day closed the original cycle of one of the most relevant and successful careers that a Cuban singer has ever had,» writes Marquetti Torres in the first pages of the book, available on Amazon under the Desmemoriados Project label.ĭuring the following year and a half since her departure from Cuba, Celia Cruz would see that her music and her art could grow in the United States she would immediately be invited to give concerts on important stages of the Union, with enormous success.Ī great door opened there, while Cuba, where the Revolution had just triumphed, represented many new uncertainties for those who made cabarets and dance halls’ nights shine. It is a story that spans from the time she came into the world as the daughter of Ollita and Simon, until she saw for the last time «the sun of Cuba shine in that sky,» as Celia herself would tell in her memoirs. It ended being a one-way trip, from which the musicographer Rosa Marquetti Torres begins her story in Celia en Cuba (1935-1962), her recently published biographical book dedicated to a fundamental and little-known part of the life of «La Guarachera de Cuba». At 35 years old, as a recognized soloist and female voice of La Sonora Matancera (one of the main Cuban orchestras of that time), Celia Cruz was already a star a star that would be born again. On Friday, July 15, 1960, Celia Caridad Cruz Alfonso flew from Havana to Mexico City to fulfill one of the many artistic commitments she used to have. Musicologist and biographer Rosa Marquetti Torres reveals to us details of Celia Cruz before she left the island. By Milena Recio / – ApThe least known stage of this world icon of Cuban music was spent in Cuba.
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