Celia Cruz Dies at Age 77

[consentida]

Celia Cruz: The spice, and spirit, of salsa music craze
By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY

Celia Cruz, the Cuban-born Queen of Salsa who popularized Latin music around the globe, died Wednesday at her home in Fort Lee, N.J.

The iconic singer, 77, had surgery in December for a brain tumor, but her health continued to decline, and she fell into a coma on Tuesday.

Credited for enticing mainstream audiences to salsa music, Cruz lit the fuse of a Latin craze that persists today. She launched her career in 1950 as the singer for popular Havana band La Sonora Matancera, regarded as the Latin equivalent of the Duke Ellington Orchestra. The group defected before Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, and Cruz never returned to her homeland.

In 1962, she moved to New York and married trumpeter Pedro Knight, her manager until the mid-'90s, when he became her musical director. Knight, along with Cruz's close friends, was at his wife's side when she died.

Cruz left La Sonora in 1965 to pursue a solo career in a band assembled by Tito Puente. Her celebrity soared in the '70s when a new generation of Hispanics discovered her music.

Cruz rose from meager beginnings to reign over a golden era of Latin music, a genre formerly dominated by men. She grew up in a poor Havana household of 14 children. Her father encouraged her to become a schoolteacher, but Cruz gravitated toward music and tagged along with an aunt to cabarets and nightclubs. After singing in school productions and winning talent shows, she entered Cuba's National Music Conservatory in 1947 to study voice and piano.

Upon receiving the Hispanic Heritage Awards lifetime achievement honor at Washington's Kennedy Center in 1988, Cruz said, "I have fulfilled my father's wish (for me) 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."

Cruz's music, preserved on more than 70 albums recorded since the 1950s, spanned generations, races, languages and borders. A flamboyant and energetic performer, Cruz wore vibrant costumes and wild wigs while belting Spanish tunes peppered with shouts of "Azucar!" (Spanish for sugar). Her signature polka-dot dress landed in the Smithsonian's permanent collection.

Cruz won a Grammy for tropical Latin performance (Ritmo en el Corazon) in 1989 and a Latin Grammy for best salsa album (La Negra Tiene Tumbao) last year. She also received the National Medal of Arts and an honorary doctorate from Yale University. She portrayed a nightclub owner in the 1992 movie The Mambo Kings.

Frequent collaborator Ruben Blades told the Associated Press: "Celia Cruz could take any song and make it unforgettable. She transcended the material. ... I don't think you could hear anything she did and be indifferent."

-----------------------------------

This is really sad. She was one of the greatest Latin Artists out there. She broke barriers and made a lasting impression on Latin America. She was a humble and gracious person, I just wish she could have stayed a little longer.

[Pitooey]

I was so sad to hear she died. I had no idea she was so sick. She sang so good. I'll miss her........