MUSIC SAVED MY LIFE

As the Queen of Latin Pop Gloria Estefan releases a new album to mark 50 years in the industry, she talks parenting, partying and the bus crash that almost paralysed her... and her career

- By John Earls

LITTERING accolades have long accompanied Gloria Estefan throughout her celebrated career, with nine Grammys and a Lifetime Achievement gong at the American Music Awards chief among them.

But one award that stands out for the most successful Latin crossover artist in music history is a significant but unusual honour bestowed on her by the US government.

In 2018, Gloria’s classic 1987 hit Rhythm Is Gonna Get You was placed in the US Congress’s National Recording Registry: a bombproof vault of around 1,100 records of “cultural or historical significance” to survive in case of war.

“When I heard that, I thought: ‘Is music really going to be a priority after a nuclear holocaust? I’m not sure’,” chuckles Gloria today as she marks 50 years of making music. “But it’s such an honour to be thought of as so significant. And trying to salvage music sounds very optimistic.”

The idea of her songs being linked with survival is nothing new to the Cuban-born musician, who believes her work was a reviving force after she was almost killed in a bus crash in 1990. Recovering in hospital from a fractured spine, facing life in a wheelchair, the ordeal took Gloria back to helping to care for her father in Miami.

While serving with the US Army in the Vietnam War, José Fajardo had been exposed to the harmful Agent Orange herbicide. It left him confined to a wheelchair with multiple sclerosis. A teenage Gloria and her mother, Gloria Sr, had to constantly care for the stricken José.

Post-crash, the thought that her husband Emilio and their son Nayib would also need to care for her left Gloria doubly determined that she would resume a normal life.

So in January 1991, just 10 months after her bus was hit by a truck in Pennsylvania, she returned to performing, met by a rapturous reception at the American Music Awards.