[On March 2nd,
the great Cuban-American actor
and entertainer Desi
Arnaz would have celebrated his 100th birthday. So for Arnaz’s
centennial, a series on a handful of Cuban-American figures and histories!]
On a trio of
talented and influential Cuban American musical artists who also reflect their
respective generations and periods.
1)
Arturo
Sandoval (born 1949): Sandoval, one of the 20th century’s most
talented and influential jazz
trumpeters and composers
(and he’s still going strong
into the 21st!), first became a force within the worlds of jazz
and music while still in Cuba: he helped establish the Orquestra Cubana de Música
Moderna in 1967 (when he was only 18), and began touring with his own band
shortly thereafter; in 1982 he toured with the legendary trumpeter Dizzy
Gillespie, and they began a close working and personal relationship. It
while on a 1990 world tour with Gillespie that Sandoval
defected to the U.S. embassy in Rome, beginning the Cuban American stage of
his life and career that included his 1998 citizenship and his 2013
Presidential Medal of Freedom. Although, again, he has continued to work
prolifically in recent years, and although any figure this pioneering unquestionably
transcends historical circumstances, Sandoval’s connections to both jazz and to
Cold War Cuban and American dynamics embody the baby boom generation in many
ways.
2)
Gloria
Estefan (born 1957): Although she was born only eight years after Sandoval
(and left Cuba long before him, in 1960 as
her family fled Castro’s revolution), I would nonetheless locate salsa and pop
singer, songwriter, and superstar (and now businesswoman
and entrepreneur) Estefan in a subsequent generation and artistic period. “Conga,” the 1985 song
that launched Estefan and her band Miami Sound Machine (she had been singing
with them since 1977,
when they were known as Miami Latin Boys) into international superstardom, mixes
Latino rhythms and influences with the legacy of disco and the currents of 80s
pop, yielding a new sound that would make Estefan and the band into perennial
chart-toppers for the rest of the decade. After Estefan went solo in 1991 with the
album Into the Light, she
continued to build on those interconnected musical and cultural influences over
subsequent decades, moving back and forth between English and Spanish songs and
albums in the process (and receiving her own Presidential Medal of
Freedom, along with her husband
and lifelong collaborator Emilio, in 2015). In all those ways, Estefan
reflects the evolution of popular music and culture in and after the 1980s, an
evolution that continues to shape our 21st century world in every
way.
3)
Pitbull (born 1981): Armando Christian Pérez, the
Cuban-American rapper and producer known
by his stage name Pitbull, is the only one of these three artists to be
born in the United States; his parents had fled Cuba many years earlier, and he
was born
in Miami (a fact he includes in many, many songs). It is thus perhaps no
coincidence that Pitbull has risen to musical prominence in the genre of rap,
one of the most
uniquely American musical genres; while it’s true that he frequently raps
in Spanish as well as English, I would (as any reader of this blog likely knows)
call that a
distinctly American combination as well. So it’s certainly possible to say
that Pitbull represents an overtly post-Cuban identity and generation, one
where Cuba is of course a heritage but where the United States—not only
geographically, but in its art and pop culture—is the central presence and
influence. Yet at the same time, we AmericanStudiers know that identity,
community, and culture are never that simple—and in this particular case, as
all of this week’s posts will reflect, Miami in particular is a setting that
over the last half century has come to be defined as fully by Cuba as by any
influence. So Pitbull really reflects a new Cuban-American generation and
community, one helping them and all of us move into the 21st
century.
Next
CubanAmericanStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other Cuban American stories or histories you’d highlight?
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