Celebrity, "Crossover," and Cubanidad

Celia Cruz as "La Reina de Salsa," 1971-2003

Bibliographic Data

ID3979852
AuthorsChristina Abreu (0000-0001-9005-9599), Christina D Abreu (corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume28
Issue1
Pages94-124
Publication date2007-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLatin American Music Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0163-0350 • E-ISSN: 1536-0199
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/lat.2007.0012
OpenAlexW1536057291
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited15

When Cuban-born Celia Cruz arrived in New York City in 1962, she faced audiences that dismissed her as irrelevant to their current musical and cultural preferences. The boom in ethnic pride of the 1970s, though, allowed Celia to emerge as the only female superstar of salsa, the "new" sound of Latin music. From 1971 to 2003, Celia developed into a dynamic entertainer representative of the commercial success of salsa music, the musical, linguistic, and cultural possibilities and tensions associated with "crossover," and the essence or cubanidad of the Cuban exile community. Throughout this paper, I argue that Celia both manufactured and resisted her popularity with a mainstream audience, demonstrating that "crossing over" does not necessitate a shift from the margin to mainstream but may also represent a shift from one sort of margin to another

Art · Art history · Entertainment · Humanities · Literature · Mainstream · Musical · Performance art · Popularity · SALSA · Superstar · Visual arts · Cuban History and Society · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Music History and Culture · Philosophy · Psychology

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