CELIA CRUZ

From the ultimate to the original Latin diva, our ‘Reina de la Salsa’ was born in 1920’s Havana. An avid performer of santería and traditional yoruba songs, Celia spent her youth winning musical competitions and was lead singer for La Sonora Matancera, Cuba’s most popular band ever, when Fidel Castro assumed power in 1959. In the early 60s, the whole band left to tour in Mexico and never returned. From there Celia arrived in the US, but it wasn’t until 1973 when Fania records, began aggressively marketing the sound that became known as ‘salsa’ that her career.

Part of the famous trip that took the Fania All Stars to Zaire in 1974 to perform in the Kinshasha stadium, from then on Celia was the undisputed “Queen of Salsa” until her death in 2003, outliving salsa’s popularity peak in the late 70s, to continue her success in the 80s. That decade not only witnessed Cruz reuniting with La Sonora Matancera for an album, it also found her making an entry in The Guinness Book Of World Records for a free outdoor concert in Tenerife – at that time the biggest event of its kind, attracting 250,000 people. Recalling the concert, she said: “An event like that goes to show the importance of exporting the music of my tiny homeland throughout the world.”

‘La Vida es un carnaval’, which Lucy will sing, is one of Cruz’s most popular songs, from her 1998 album “Mi vida es cantar” (1998). This song won the award for “Tropical Song of the Year” at the 2003 Lo Nuestro Awards .

Gloria Estefan

There was once a little Cuban girl who was dragged from house to house by her mum in Miami watching the signs: ‘no children, no pets, no Cubans.’ ”Miami was the deep South, don’t forget, a difficult place for non-white Americans. The fear of the Cuban invasion was just beginning,” Gloria Estefan told LatinoLife.

Gloria Estefan epitomises the American Dream: from revolution, exile, immigration and hardship to becoming the world’s first ever mainstream Latina pop star and one half of Latin Music’s most famous couple.

“We had nothing when we came to Miami,” Gloria continues. “The Cubans ripped up my mum’s degree when she left so she couldn’t get a decent job and my father was still in prison in Cuba.” Gloria’s father joined them when she was 6, but not long after, went to fight in Vietnam.

When he returned, he contracted Multiple Sclerosis, which was later proved to be caused by exposure to Agent Orange, a poisonous chemical used by the US Army in Vietnam. While her mother worked, Gloria took care of her father throughout her teens, until he died 14 years later, when Gloria was 23.

Fast forward to 1984 when, signed to Columbia, Miami Sound Machine got their first dance hit “Dr. Beat” followed by “Conga”, which became a worldwide hit. Their 1987 album ‘Let It Loose’, featuring ‘Rhythm Is Gonna Get You’, went multiplatinum, with three million copies sold in the US alone. But with the worldwide success of the ballads such as “Anything for You,” the appeal of Gloria as lead singer was becoming increasingly clear. Emilio decided to make his wife a superstar. And so she did, becoming the world’s first crossover Latina mega artist. The story didn’t end there. In the next decades, the Estefans would go on to discover and produce the major Latin crossover artists of the next 10 years, including Ricky Martin, Shakira, with Gloria writing many of their songs. Indeed Shakira would not exist, if it were not for the Estefans. Lucy has chosen the iconic Gloria tune Conga to fire up the festival.

La India

Though lesser known to the mainstream, in our humble opinion, La India one of the greatest Latina singers in the world. This Nuyorican burst onto the scene in the 90s. Formerly part of the NY house music “Freestyle” movement, she got bitten by the salsa bug (don’t we all!) and recorded some of the most memorable classics of modern salsa. Unique in her ability to sing Salsa songs in English and make them sound as good as in Spanish (check out her version of ‘Turn off the Lights’), she is a true emblem of the unique voice of Nuyorican culture. She could pull it all of simply because her voice is unmatched, making her without a doubt, one of the most successful Latina singers ever.

Her duet with Marc Anthony ‘Vivir Lo Nuestro’ (one of the best Salsa hits of all time) pretty much launched the career of the then skinny Puerto Rican with a bad haircut. Marc was to become the biggest Latin artist of the 90s and Salsa’s megasuper star, but in this song, India is definitely the boss, virtually eating him alive in their classic live performance.

Marc Anthony and La India knew each other from the New York House Freestyle scene. India’s husband, legendary House producer Little Louie Vega (and nephew of Salsa’s most famous icon Hector Lavoe) was also Marc’s producer. A love version of the song was part of the seminal album La Combinacion Perfecta that made both artists international superstars. When they released Vivir Lo Nuestro in 1994 Marc looked like a geek prematurely released from the science lab, let alone worthy of singing alongside the diosa that is La India... but the astounding vocals of both is very forgiving. We can’t wait to hear Lucy sing this song with the best Cuban vocalist in town Rene Alvarez.