Just when we end the festivities for the Day of Cuban Culture, one of the greatest of this island would be turning 88. Today she receives one of the most widespread tributes on what current technology allows: a doodle of the King of Universal Internet search engines, Google. In Cuba her name is history, culture silenced in many dictionaries.
Ursula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso de la Santísima Trinidad was born on this day in 1925. A name impossible to pronounce, but that culture coined with a simple Celia Cruz.
She was known simply as Celia for three generations of exponents of Cuban music. A singer as great as her success, as cool as her music and as tropical as her island
A year after the Revoltion Triumph and during a tour of the Sonora Matancera orchestra, Celia “stayed” in the United States to become the voice of the Cuban exile. But she was more than that. She devoted her entire career to transform salsa with Tito Puente and the Fania All Star making her music travel worldwide to become the Queen of Salsa.
With her voice she charmed all around here and there. The black had her “Tumbao” with Guaracha and son montuno rhythm. She acknowledged that this life is a carnival and lived fully, always hoping to return, as she said, to “her free Cuba.”
Despite the impossible, the smile never faded from her face. With her distinctive voice, outgoing, charismatic and flamboyant style on stage, Celia was mixing Afro-Cuban sounds and jazz. She was to the world the face of an island where her music was banned, but that was heard with the volume not loud on more than one house.
Her very rhythmic Azucar! accompanied Celia as a “war cry” throughout her career , when she accumulated a total of five Grammys , left as a trace a star on the Walk of Fame , three universities gave her an honorary award and the inhabitant of the White House in 1994, Bill Clinton, handed her the National Arts Award . Cancer in 2003 ended the career of the artist, but they posthumous awards and events in memory of the Cuban continued for who was the most beloved and esteemed artist by the “political exiles ” .
Celia was buried ten years ago with a handful of soil from her country who gathered under a fence from the Guantanamo Naval Base. She succeeded in life in almost everything she tried; she lacked only one thing to do: she could never return to Cuba after her departure in 1960.
Today Celia Cruz will have her birthday in this land, but life wanted her to leave earlier. Google makes posthumous tribute to the diva in her 88th anniversary. Today is a holiday because she had so willed. Day of salsa and sugar! Day of uniting dreams and forget grudge. Today is the day of Celia Cruz. Cuba owes her the party.
Author
Alejandro Ruiz Chang
