Cuban American singer Gloria Estefan confessed that his album My land It is still his favorite, despite the fact that it came to light 30 years ago.
“It was done to keep Cuba alive and for our children to know their roots,” he said in an interview with EFE.
Released on June 22, 1993 under Sony Music’s Epic Records label, the album contains boleros, son montuno, chachachá, danzón and closes with a conga from Santiago.
“It is a project that touches the variations of Cuban music, which is so rich. Culturally it reflects Emilio and me. As artists, it has been the greatest contribution that we have made to who we are. That mixture (of sounds) is very real in us”, explained the artist.
Its 12 songs were written especially for the occasion, and since 1993 it has sold 19 million copies.
“This record was a love letter to our land and a hand that I extended to Cuba through these 90 miles. Cuba continues to be very important in our lives, we share something that is our heritage,” the interpreter stressed.
My land It is not the first album that Gloria recorded in Spanish, but it is the first one that she did in Spanish “after the success in English”.
The singer, who grew up listening to the songs of Olga Guillot and Celia Cruz, recounted that she and her husband were “at the height of success” when they began to dream of showing the world why they mixed Afro-Cuban music with their music in English. .
“We wanted to put something new, write new songs, but that sounded as if they had been written in the 40s, in Cuba’s musical golden age, songs before Castro. So we had that idea,” she said.
“We talk about bringing great Cuban music, that’s why there is Cachao, Arturo Sandoval, Paquito de Rivera and Juanito Márquez, a composer who was the king of the feeling“, he detailed.
The song that gives the album its name is a joint work between Emilio and the Colombian composer Fabio Alonso Salgado, known as Estéfano.
“Emilio told him that he wanted to make a song with what it feels like on the land that one leaves behind. “I want it to be a nostalgic song, that any immigrant who is anywhere in the world remembers the smells, the flavors,” he asked. , and the two of them sat down and wrote the song,” he recalled.
This year, Gloria Estefan became the first Latin artist to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in United States.
“Thank you very much to my incredible fans who, by listening to my music, have made it possible for me to receive this great honor,” he wrote on his social networks.
“It is something incredibly special, it is a very great privilege. I never dreamed that I could be among so many people who have changed music. For me, music has been my salvation all my life so to be able to be in this Hall of Fame is something really special “, said to Wake up America.
