"Forgiving is not forgetting. Forgiving is remembering without pain." - Celia Cruz
Celia Cruz 1925 - 2003 |
Úrsula
Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso was born 98 years ago today in
Havana, Cuba, but she was better known as Celia Cruz. She played in
Cuba for twelve years from 1948 until 1960. Because she wanted to play
her music around the world, she was banned by the Castro regime from
returning to the island.
Celia was not able to return to Cuba when her father died there in 1961, and she was not allowed to return to Cuba when her mother became ill, or at attend her funeral when her mom died in 1962.
Celia
Cobo of Billboard Magazine observed that "Cruz is indisputably the best
known and most influential female figure in the history of Cuban
music." The impact of the Castro regime on music in Cuba goes beyond
jailing musicians and includes systematic censorship that threatens the
island's musical legacy as has been the case with the Queen of Salsa.
Google Doodle of Celia Cruz from 2013 |
She is recognized around the world as an icon of music and in 2013 Google honored Celia on the 88th anniversary of her birth with a Google Doodle. In 2010 the United States Postal Service issued a postage stamp in her honor describing the Cuban artist as follows.
"A dazzling performer of many genres of Afro-Caribbean music, Celia Cruz (1925-2003) had a powerful contralto voice and a joyful, charismatic personality that endeared her to fans from different nationalities and across generations. Settling in the United States following the Cuban revolution, the “Queen of Salsa” performed for more than five decades and recorded more than 50 albums."
Next year the United States Mint will be featured on the reverse side of the U.S. quarter as one of the honorees for the American Women Quarters Program.
The phrase cultural genocide is used to describe the "cultural revolution" of the 1960s and 1970s that blacklisted and censored scores of Cuban musicians and artists.
The above censorship is widely known, but not as well known is that the way Celia Cruz was blocked by Fidel Castro from returning to Cuba to say goodbye to her parents, still goes on today in Cuba with members of the diaspora barred arbitrarily from seeing their loved ones by the Castro regime.
The Queen of Salsa passed away twenty years go on July 16, 2003 and her music is still banned in Cuba today. At the time of her death the Associated Press reported:Celia Cruz: The Queen of Salsa
"While the death of salsa singer Celia Cruz was reported prominently in newspapers across the world, the news got scant and somewhat bitter treatment Thursday in the official media of her homeland. The Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma reported Cruz’s death in a tiny, two-paragraph story published low on page 6 of the eight-page edition."
On August 8, 2012 BBC News reported that the Cuban regime's ban on anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted and two days later the BBC correspondent in Cuba, Sarah Rainsford, tweeted that she had been given names of forbidden artists by the central committee and the internet was a buzz that the ban on anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted. Others soon followed reporting on the news. The stories specifically mentioned Celia Cruz as one of the artists whose music would return to Cuban radio.
Let Celia Cruz's music be heard in Cuba
This
wasn't news but a rumor that nine years after her death her music would
be played on Cuban radio, after a half century absence but they were
dispelled by regime officials. On August 21, 2012 Tony Pinelli, a
musician and radio producer, distributed an e-mail in which Rolando Álvarez, the national director of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión (ICRT) confirmed that the music of the late Celia Cruz would continue to be banned.
No comments:
Post a Comment