![]() ![]() The group, which was founded in 1924 in Matanzas, a small city on Cuba’s northwestern coast, moved to Havana during the 1930s and subsequently became one of the most popular bands on the island. The woman who would later come to be known as the “queen of salsa” gained national prominence in 1950, when she joined the dance band La Sonora Matancera. In sum, she viewed and performed Afro-Cuban sacred music as “folklore”-significant for its contributions to national culture and influences on popular music-and not as an expression of her own religious beliefs. She recounted that, as a child, she found the Santería rituals performed by neighbors frightening, although she was drawn to the music. Nonetheless, as Cruz often asserted, although many people assumed she practiced Santería-because of the subject material of her recordings and the fact that she was black-she never considered herself to be a devotee of this or any other Afro-Cuban religion like most Cubans at the time, she was raised Catholic. ![]() They incorporated choral refrains in Lucumí and the double-headed batá drums used in Santería ceremonies. In 1951 she appeared at the famed Tropicana nightclub in Rodney’s Afro-Cuban musical revue called Sun Sun Ba Baé celebrating the Afro-Cuban religion known as Santería, in which she sang in Lucumí, a Yoruba-derived language.Ĭruz’s first commercial recordings in Cuba-made in 1947–1948-were songs dedicated to the Orishas (Yoruba-derived deities) Changó and Babalú-Ayé. Nonetheless, the group offered Cruz her first opportunity to tour abroad, in Mexico and Venezuela. As the name suggests, the scantily clad dancers performed sexualized routines, thus playing into the widely held stereotypes of exoticized female blackness that were pervasive at the time. In 1947 Cruz expanded her venues of performance to the theater and cabarets when she met the famed choreographer Roderico Neyra, known as “Rodney,” and was cast as the lead singer in an all-female song and dance group called Las Mulatas de Fuego (The Fiery Mulatas). She credited her experiences on the radio with helping her develop a sense of professionalism, noting that because the performances were live, one had to be prepared for anything and be able to improvise in order to cover a mistake. She did not graduate from the conservatory, however, because she soon joined La Sonora Matancera and her professional career took off.Ĭruz began her professional career in the late 1940s as a singer for the local radio station CMQ, subsequently working for Mil Diez and other commercial stations in Havana. After graduating in 1949, Cruz enrolled in Havana’s National Conservatory of Music, where she took classes until 1950. In 1947 Cruz enrolled in the Escuela Normal de Maestros (Teachers’ College) in Havana, but she also began to enter amateur singing contests on local radio stations, where she won recognition from both listeners and professional musicians. Cruz’s father was opposed to her entering the entertainment field and encouraged Cruz to pursue teaching, which he felt was a more respectable profession that did not carry the connotations of prostitution attached to female performers at the time. She began singing at a very young age, entertaining family and friends, and was drawn to Afro-Cuban popular music when her maternal aunt brought her to watch and dance in comparsas, neighborhood-based groups that paraded and danced in Havana’s annual Carnival competition, accompanied by African-derived percussion. Cruz was the second of four surviving children, and she grew up among an extended family of aunts and cousins. Her father, Simón Cruz, worked shoveling coal on the railroads, and her mother, Catalina Alfonso, was a homemaker. Was born Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso on 21 October 1925 in the working-class, racially diverse neighborhood of Santos Suárez in Havana, Cuba. Miscellaneous Occupations and Realms of Renownīefore 1400: The Ancient and Medieval Worldsġ400–1774: The Age of Exploration and the Colonial Eraġ775–1800: The American Revolution and Early Republicġ801–1860: The Antebellum Era and Slave Economyġ877–1928: The Age of Segregation and the Progressive Eraġ929–1940: The Great Depression and the New Dealġ941–1954: WWII and Postwar Desegregation Exploration, Pioneering, and Native Peoples ![]()
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