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Gloria Estefan’s Daughter Releases Debut Album; Thoughts On Post-Castro Cuba

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 04:53 PST, Feb 16, 2017

Gloria Estefan is such a musical superstar that her adult daughter Emily refused to sing in front of her throughout her childhood and adolescence.

The Detroit Free Press reported that when Emily Estefan was 18-years-old, she finally broke through her fear of singing in front of her world-renowned mother. She waited until she and her mother were at their family’s beach house in Florida performing, at first she asked Gloria Estefan to turn away.

“I was like shaking, shaking, shaking, shaking. Everything in my body was shaking. But I did it.”

After the song was over, Emily Estefan, now 22-years-old, said that her mother did the two things she had asked her not to do: she looked at her, and then she started crying.

Fast forward four years and Emily Estefan is releasing her debut album, Take Whatever You Want. It may have taken 18 years for Gloria Estefan’s daughter to have the courage to perform in front of her famous mother, but it seems like the wait was well worth it.

Gloria Estefan is one of the foremost Latin American divas who has enchanted audiences by performing songs that were heavily based on the Latin music and style. Estefan gained prominence as the lead member of the Miami Sound Machine, a music group that was active from 1975 to 2002. Gloria Estefan was always the main attraction of the band even though the entire group was recognized for delivering hit songs and albums.

As her career progressed, the Cuban-born diva continued to exercise influence over the band’s music style, and eventually, the band became Gloria Estefan’s backup group while she pursued her solo career. Estefan soon became a world famous pop star, well-known for her power ballads like “Don’t Wanna Lose You Now,” “Always Tomorrow,” and “I See your Smile.”

The music icon’s talents were sharpened and honed in her teenage years when she started to depend on music as a means to escape the tensions of her everyday life. Gloria Estefan’s childhood was a difficult one, as she with her parents from Cuba to Miami during the Cuban revolution. Estefan’s father had been a Cuban soldier, and so he enlisted in the United States Army after the family migrated to the U.S., and the family suffered many hardships as her father was continuously involved in the military conflicts against American enemies.

While participating in the Bay of Pigs invasion against Cuba, Gloria Estefan’s father was taken as a political prisoner. Later, he participated in the Vietnam War and suffered from multiple sclerosis after being affected by Agent Orange in the war.

Throughout her teenage years, Gloria Estefan helped her mother to run the household and care for the family. The iconic singer is understandably sensitive towards the plight of the Cuban people who are repressed by Cuba’s communist government, and she once revealed that she was reluctant to perform in Cuba, concerned by the idea of spending time in her home country where people are routinely jailed and beaten for fighting for their rights.

It, therefore, came as little surprise when Gloria Estefan revealed that she did not feel sad when she learned of the death of Fidel Castro on November 25, 2016. In fact, the “Turn The Beat Around” singer believes that Castro’s death will enable the Cubans to reinvent themselves by leading their lives in a free way. According to People magazine, Gloria Estefan spoke about the positive impact of Castro’s death on the Cuban people.

“Although the death of a human being is rarely cause for celebration, it is the symbolic death of the destructive ideologies that he espoused that, I believe, is filling the Cuban exile community with renewed hope and a relief that has been long in coming.”

Gloria Estefan believes that it will take some time before the Cuban people actually break from Castro’s communist stronghold because his views and beliefs have dictated the lives of Cuban citizens for many decades. Moreover, it will take time for Cubans to fully embrace more liberal views, as they are well aware that those who had opposed Castro’s communist regime in the past were either jailed or exiled.

Estefan holds the opinion that Castro’s demise will bring about positive change for Cuba, as the late military leader was responsible for causing the country’s economic collapse by curbing freedom and speech and promoting terrorism. According to Entertainment Weekly, Gloria Estefan prayed for the spirit of freedom to prevail in Cuba and the United States.

“May freedom continue to ring in the United States, my beautiful adopted country, and may the hope for freedom be inspired and renewed in the heart of every Cuban in my homeland and throughout the world.”

[Featured Image by Aaron Davidson/Getty Images]

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