Gloria Estefan

Gloria Estefan has been making records for over twenty years. Her latest album "90 Millas" honors the musical traditions of Cuba, the country where she was born. The songs express a longing for the home she left as a young child. Estefan helped write most of the songs on the album, which are in Spanish. She gathered famous musicians from around Latin America to perform with her.

That was the song "No Llores" or "Don't Cry." The well-known Mexican-American musician Carlos Santana plays guitar on this song.

Gloria Estefan made this album with her husband, record producer and musician Emilio Estefan. The couple live in Miami, Florida, which has a large population of Cuban-Americans.

The name of this album means "90 miles." This is the distance between Cuba and the United States. It is a small distance, but to many Cuban-Americans with families still in Cuba it feels much larger.

Gloria Estefan invited several performers in the world of Latin music to join her in this album. These include the flute player Johnny Pacheco and Israel Cachao Lopez, who is known as the inventor of mambo music.

Gloria Estefan has said that her only wish was that the Cuban-born salsa singer Celia Cruz had been alive to perform on this album. Cruz died in two thousand three.

Gloria Estefan has made a career out of combining the sounds of Latin America with popular dance music. In "90 Millas" she gives a modern version of traditional Cuban songs.

But her first songs mixed the dance sounds of disco and salsa music. In ninety eighty-five, she and her band, the Miami Sound Machine, released "Conga." We leave you with that song which helped launch Gloria Estefan's career.

Dana Demange and Nancy Steinbach. AMERICAN MOSAIC, VOA's radio magazine in Special English.

Bahasa Indonesia version: Gloria Estefan