Brian Lehrer: As we continue our Centennial Series, 100 Years of 100 Things, we turn to thing number 91, the life and legacy of one of the most influential voices in Latin music, Celia Cruz, born 100 years ago this October. Known as the Queen of Salsa, Cruz brought fire and joy to every stage she stepped onto, electrifying audiences with her unmistakable voice and magnetic stage presence. Even now, two decades after her passing, clips of her performances crackle with an energy that's impossible to fake. Then there's her signature call, Azúcar, a word that has become a battle cry for Afro-Latin pride and cultural expression as potent as her voice itself. Joining us to talk about her remarkable life and lasting influence is Felix Contreras, host and co-creator of NPR's Alt.Latino will trace Cruz's rise from Havana to the global stage, play some more of her most iconic songs, and dig into the legacy of a woman who changed the sound of Latin music forever. Felix, great to have you again. Welcome back to WNYC.

Felix Contreras: Hey, Brian, good to be back, man. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with the basics, and for people who don't know. Who was Celia Cruz, and what made her such a towering, almost mythical figure?

Felix Contreras: Oh my gosh. In the time we have left. As you said, she was really one of the most recognizable voices in Latin music and music in general. She had this really magnificent instrument in her voice. She came from Cuba, she was a very popular star in Cuba, and let's say the 1940s with a group called Sonora Matancera. Then she moved to the United States, and she was kind of floundering there. She was not really working a lot. She's in her 40s. By that point, she considered like, "Okay, maybe my career is over."

Then the folks that were starting the Fania Records label, Johnny Pacheco in particular, who's the music arranger and co-owner at that time, he said, "Hey, I want to make a record with this woman from Cuba. Nobody knows about her. She's just sitting there," blah, blah, blah. Then that's the short version, and the rest is history. Say she made from that first record that she made with Johnny Pacheco. Just incredible voice, great arrangements, a unique approach to the music, and Afro-Caribbean music in particular, Afro-Cuban music.

It just took off from there. She just threw the old way, the old style, old school, hard work, lots of gigs, lots of performances, meeting and greeting after concerts, and just took off from there.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a few seconds of an early classic. This is Juancito Trucupey, one of her early recordings with the legendary Cuban band La Sonora Matancera.

[MUSIC - Celia Cruz:Juancito Trucupey]

Want to talk a little bit about that track and what it revealed about her emerging style at the time?

Felix Contreras: It says everything about it because the music is so syncopated. The Afro-Cuban music, and particularly the dance music, because you got the rhythms underneath, and then you have the horn charts on top that are often doing things in counterpoint. There's all these stuff going on. There's lots of rhythm and her voice and her style and her technique. She was, I think, as much a drummer as she was a vocalist, because the way that she sang, the way that she fit her singing the melodies, and then the way she improvised.

Her improvisation in the final parts of the song, it just fit in. You can listen to it. I think drummers can train and listen and understand and learn how to phrase and how to put things amidst everything else that's going on.

Brian Lehrer: That's such an interesting way to think about the human voice that it can be seen not just as a melody instrument, but a percussion instrument. That is really interesting. Any Celia Cruz fans listening right now who want to call in and say anything about your love for her and her music with Felix Contreras from NPR's Alt.Latino, 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Before we play another clip, we played coming into the segment, a little bit of Azúcar Negra. What was Azúcar to Celia Cruz and the world?

Felix Contreras: It was her battle cry, really. She tells this story. There's a clip of her on YouTube where she talks about how she was at a Cuban restaurant in Miami, and they brought her coffee, and it didn't have any sugar. The guy says, "Would you like some sugar?" She says, "Of course. I'm Cuban. Azucar." That's her story about how she sprinkled that phrase into her recordings, into her performances. It became her thing. You can hear people now when they reference that, you know who they're talking about.

It's just one of these things that endeared her. I like to call her everybody's favorite Cuban aunt because people loved her. People loved her as a person. They loved her music, and they felt like she was part of the family. I've talked to people from all over Latin America of all ages. Even younger people now, they still have this deep personal affection for her as a person, as a personality, as just a presence.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a little bit of a classic Guantanamera.

[MUSIC- Celia Cruz:Guantanamera]

Felix, I think for listeners not familiar with Celia Cruz or Latin music at all, that may be the one song that everybody's ears-- Oh, Guantanamera.

Felix Contreras: It speaks to one of the three things that I think when we think about-- Well, at least when I think about Celia Cruz, I think about the musical aspect of what we've talked about. Her voice and her phrasing and what her voice sounded like. The fact that she's considered part of the family of so many people, of her listeners, her dedicated fans, but also the social aspect. She was an icon of the Cuban exile movement because she left Cuba just after the revolution, and she was never allowed to go back.

It was famously not allowed to go back when her mother passed. She was an icon and a representative of that generation of Cubans who eventually landed here in the United States, who could not go back to their country. That particular song, it was like throughout her career, that's the one that like would get people teary-eyed. It would get everybody in concert, everybody aligned with, yes, this is what we miss.

Brian Lehrer: Maria in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Maria.

Maria: Hi, how are you? How is everyone? I'm glad that your guest mentioned his last comment was touched on her politics and her social activism because, no, there's no arguing about her talent, and her music. She also, as an individual, navigated very, very difficult times pre and post-Castro. She was a dark Afro-Cuban who positioned herself so that everyone in Cuba, regardless of race, regardless of economic status, loved her and followed her music and danced to her music, and went to the places with-- I am Cuban-American. I remember as a child hearing the adults talk about her performances were absolutely sold out.

She had a really hard decision when she came to the United States because it was to a certain way starting all over again. As it was mentioned before, she was found again, embraced by the Puerto Rican community. They were very close, tied to this day between Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians. I'm glad you're having this moment because I wasn't scheduled to listen to you today.

[laughter]

I had an appointment that happened to be canceled at the last minute. I go, "Oh, this has to be for me." What a nice coincidence. Thank you very much.

Brian Lehrer: I'm glad it happened to be out there today, Maria. She mentions the socio-political importance. I read that the FBI had a file on Celia Cruz. Do you know that to be true?

Felix Contreras: I don't know. I've heard that too. I really should look into that. It wouldn't surprise me because that's such a volatile issue, and it depends on where you stand and all that. That's the one thing about Celia is she united. The people who were either-- The pro-government, for lack of a better word, loved her. The people who were anti-government down there also loved her. As Maria said, right now, she threaded that needle very well and there was no question about where she stood, but she's threaded that needle, and that, I think, led to her widespread acceptance.

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned her partnership with Johnny Pacheco and that's, as you say, when things really took off for her. Here's a few seconds of their explosive 1974 collaboration, Quimbara.

[MUSIC- Celia Cruz and Johnny Pacheco:Quimbara]

Anything more, Felix, briefly on the Celia Cruz Johnny Pacheco partnership?

Felix Contreras: Oh man. It was a match made up in the sky, in the universe. They understood each other so well, so intimately. Johnny Pacheco understood what the power of her voice was because she had this magnificent, as everybody knows, just magnificent, powerful voice, one of a kind that could do miraculous things. I think that their collaboration, it stands the test of time. It's ground zero. It's definitive. If you're going to make music like that, that's what you have to come up to.

Brian Lehrer: One more fan call. Basilio in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hey, thanks for calling in.

Basilio: Hi. I just wanted to comment that Celia Cruz was very close to the Puerto Rican community and when she passed, she wanted to be buried in El Condado de La Salsa, the Bronx, where there's a huge Puerto Rican community. More than that, she promoted Puerto Rican music in the form of bomba. She recorded with Pacheco, she recorded Tito Puente, and with Willie Colón, a series of bombas. At the introduction of each of the recordings, she would announce bomba to let people know, and especially the Puerto Rican people know that this was their music that she was singing.

Brian Lehrer: Basilio, thank you. Felix, not just important to the Cuban community, he's saying, but also to the Puerto Rican community and very much to New York.

Felix Contreras: Oh, yeah. Basilio nailed that, man. Particularly in New York. Then I grew up in California. I'm from California originally, Mexican American background. Once I started discovering this music, I understood that, yes, like I said, she had fans all over Latin America, in every Spanish speaking country and in Spain. It's really amazing the reach that she had, but in particular the Cuban and the Puerto Rican community, because that was the nucleus, the basis of the salsa sound. There's just no getting past just how popular she was.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to go out with one more Celia Cruz track in just a minute that's a little more contemporary as we fast forward to the 2000s and she was still innovating. We're going to play a few seconds to end the segment of La Negra Tiene Tumbao. Do you want to say one last thing about where you hear her influence today still two decades after her passing?

Felix Contreras: It's a curious thing right now. A lot of the younger urban musicians in Latin music that we play on Alt.Latino, they're reaching out to salsa right now. Salsa's having to come back in this younger generation. You'd have to have a showdown with me, man, because that is definitely the influence of Celia Cruz and Fania and everything that happened in those early '70s with Celia being the queen right at the top. I think that that's the kind of influence she has right now to this day.

Brian Lehrer: 20 seconds. What do you have coming up on Alt.Latino?

Felix Contreras: More new music. Lots of great new music. We're almost doing a weekly thing on new music, but then in a couple weeks we're going to do something on the history of the accordion in Latin America. Check that out.

Brian Lehrer: Fun. Felix Contreras, host and co creator of NPR's Alt.Latino. Thanks for jumping on today and talking about 100 Years of Celia Cruz.

Felix Contreras: Hey, Brian, it's always a pleasure to talk to you, man.

Brian Lehrer: Here she is one more time.

[MUSIC- Celia Cruz:La Negra Tiene Tumbao]

That's 100 Years of 100 Things. Thing number 91, 100 years of Celia Cruz. Now, stay tuned for All Of It coming up next here on WNYC. Thanks for listening to The Brian Lehrer Show today.

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