Celia Cruz, known as the Queen of Salsa, was an internationally acclaimed singer and dynamic stage performer from the 1940s to the start of the 21st century.

Celia Cruz was instrumental to the creation and popularization of “salsa,” a new genre of pan-Hispanic music that emerged in the 1960s.

Her long, versatile career broadened the reach of Caribbean and Latin American music, celebrating its African roots.

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“Toda la vida, yo he cantado musica alegre; . . .  no me gusta cantar nada triste. Pues debo tener mis momentos de tristeza … pero eso es para mi, para mi interior. . . no quiero transmitir al público.”

[All my life, I’ve sung happy music; I don’t like to sing anything sad. Of course I have unhappy moments, but they are just for me, for my inner life. I don’t want to bring that to the public.]

-“Me Llamo Celia Cruz,” BBC documentary (1988)

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Becoming a Singer: La Guarachera de Cuba

The Queen of Salsa was born Celia Caridad Cruz Alfonso on October 21, 1925, in Havana, Cuba. Her parents, siblings, half siblings, and cousins made a large, lively household in the Santos Suárez neighborhood. They struggled economically to stretch the salary her father earned as a railway worker. For a time, young Cruz lived with an aunt and always thought of her Tía Ana as a second mother. One of the oldest children in her extended family, her earliest memories of using her musical talent were of singing the younger ones to sleep – not only with conventional lullabies, but with any songs that came into her head.

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