Gloria Estefan shares her incredible life story | Music | Entertainment

Glittering 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. Recalling her worries at the time, she tells the Daily Express: “I knew I could adapt and I wouldn’t have a problem with that. But I didn’t want my family to go through what me and my mother went through, and what my father went through. That was my prime motivation for putting everything I had into my rehabilitation. ”

Before the accident, Gloria had been at the top of her career, with her album Cuts Both Ways selling four million copies and spawning US chart-topper Don’t Wanna Lose You. The songstress’s husband Emilio, whose Miami Latin Boys band she had joined when she was 17 in 1975, wrote the song Coming Out Of The Dark for his spouse. Just three months after the crash, while still confined to a full-body brace, Gloria returned to the recording studio.

She recalls: “Music is so healing. Emilio knew if he could focus me away from my constant rehabilitation, I could have something fulfilling in my life again. My first thought after the crash was: ‘I’m never going to be able to get back onstage.’ Being able to move again was not the medical prognosis. But that song helped me relax, to lean into my rehab and lean into music, too. Like those seven hours of rehab a day when I could first walk again, music was therapeutic, incredibly impactful for me.”

Coming Out Of The Dark also hit number one in the US. Despite its dark beginnings, the song had a funny side. Gloria, now 67, reveals: “The day of the crash was grey and overcast. As we lay there, two helicopters were flying over us. Their beams kept hitting Emilio in the eyes. On a scrap of paper in the bus, he wrote that title: Coming Out Of The Dark. When Emilio eventually showed that bit of paper to me, my first question was: ‘Why did you write that in English?’”

Gloria’s new Spanish-language album Raices (“roots” in English) marks her 50th year in music. It’s also 50 years since she first encountered Emilio, now 72. They briefly first met at a friend’s house. Two months later, Gloria went to a family friend’s wedding, where Miami Latin Boys were performing.

She remembers: “Emilio said to me: ‘I know you! Do you want to sit in and sing with the band?’ I didn’t like being the centre of attention and I was thinking: ‘Oh my God…’ But my mom heard Emilio and she told me: ‘Yeah, sing!’ Singing with a band behind me, I remember feeling: ‘Wow, this is actually really cool.’”

Gloria joined Miami Latin Boys two weeks later, when they changed their name to Miami Sound Machine to reflect their new singer. It would be another year before the she and Emilio became an item. She laughs: “Emilio was my boss for that first year. I really got to know him as a human being and a son before I did as a boyfriend. I knew what I was getting into once we started dating.”

Miami Sound Machine’s debut album was released in 1977, but it was their English-language album Eyes Of Innocence in 1984 that brought mainstream success – single Dr Beat was a global hit. Gloria has since bagged three US No 1 singles and six UK Top 10 hits, while selling more than 120 million records. The Estefans’ son Nayib was born in 1980, which helped her stay grounded once her career took off.

She explains: “It didn’t matter how many people were out there yelling for me, off-stage I was mommy. We took our son on tour and included him in everything. Having a family to come home to in a hotel room, being there for me, was very grounding. Emilio and I never really wanted to go out partying anyway. To me, performing was partying, because I had such a good time at our shows. I’d spent my life taking care of my dad, with no social life, so I’ve never been the partying kind.”

Married for 46 years, Gloria and Emilio are renowned for having one of the strongest relationships in showbusiness. Asked for their secret, Gloria considers: “We’re very different personalities but, in the things that matter, we’re on the same page: music, business, politics. Family is the number one priority for both of us. Also, neither of us have that ‘It has to be how I want’ ego, and ego ruins a lot.”

The couple may be ego-free, but Gloria suspects Emilio wrote a love song for himself on her new album. Of the ballad Como Paso (How It Happened), Gloria says: “Emilio told me: ‘I’ve written you a love song,’ then he said: ‘You’ll sing it for me.’ I told him: ‘Look at this line about that sincere smile, that’s about you!’

“Emilio knows I meant every word when I sang it, but I had to laugh when he showed me that song. I told him: ‘Mr Estefan, you truly are one of a kind.’”

Another new song, Mi Nino Bello (My Beautiful Boy) was written by Gloria for her 13-year-old grandson, Sasha. The singer penned it in just 15 minutes after a day teaching him how to boogieboard at Miami Beach. “Sasha loves that song,” beams Gloria. “When I first played it to him, my son and his wife snuck onto the phone and they were crying. The rhythm is tied to the old Cuban music I listened to as a kid.”

And it’s clear that her childhood helped forge her path as The Queen of Latin Pop. Her mother studied for a PhD in education to become a teacher when Gloria’s father became ill, while her grandmother Consuelo Perez was also a role model. Consuelo’s husband had endured five heart attacks before the couple came from Cuba to Miami, where she started a catering business.

“Because of the example of my mother and grandmother, I always felt there was nothing a woman couldn’t do,” says Gloria of their influence. “I saw them do everything. They taught me to be a strong woman by example. I was listening and watching very carefully.”

While discussing her remarkable life from her Miami office, Gloria seems unguarded and is full of laughter. But she is briefly tearful when discussing the significance of being awarded the Presidential Medal Of Freedom in 2015 by Barack Obama, because of how proud her father would have been.

José died in 1980, aged just 47, and Gloria looks emotional as she says: “My father was all I could think about when I received it. He sacrificed so much when he raised us, wanting to fight so hard against Communism. My poor father was so idealistic. That award is the highest you can get as a citizen of the United States. As an immigrant from Cuba, with the circumstances we had here, that award was so special. At least my mom got to see me get it. She was very proud too.”

Gloria’s next project is writing a musical with her 30-year-old daughter, Emily. In 2001, her first musical On Your Feet, based on her hits, opened on Broadway and in the West End. New show Basura, the Spanish word for garbage, tells the true story of children living near a landfill in Paraguay, who start an orchestra made from rubbish.

Gloria enthuses: “That landfill area is so challenging, but what has come from it is so beautiful. Emily and I are incredibly proud of our musical, which will open next year.” It’s set to be another landmark for the superstar, who has no plans to retire after five decades at the top. As she summarises: “I’ve always been content in my own skin.

“My only ambitions were to be able to have a good career and a family, as I always wanted to be a mom. Music has saved my life on many occasions. Everything else? It’s incredible icing on a beautiful cake.”

• Gloria Gloria’s new album Raices is out now on Sony