Jan. 27, 2002 – Salsa is born somewhere between the navel and the knees, flows out through brass, skins and bass, then returns from whence it came.
Celia Cruz performed a spectacular concert in the rain Saturday night at the Reichhold Center for the Arts. Every seat was filled to begin with at 8:10 p.m., when she began, and even at the height of the downpour, no one left. The crowd in the uncovered seats took to its feet and began to dance in the rain and didn't sit down again until Cruz departed the stage two hours later, following a solid half hour of encores. Not bad for a woman of 77!
Celia Cruz is a native of Cuba, where she grew up and first entered the music scene. Once lead singer for the prestigious Sonora Matancera, she fled the revolution in 1960 and settled in the United States, where she has continued a career that has justified her title as "the Queen of Salsa."
Unlike many Latin performers who have attained widespread popularity in the U.S. market, Cruz is a one-language woman, singing only the Spanish which her strong, deep voice massages into a myriad of shades. She has been the recipient of a litany of achievement awards and honorary degrees (most notably from the Smithsonian Institution for her life's work) A complete discography for her 70-plus albums would be nearly impossible to compile.
Bare history, however, has very little to do with the Celia Cruz experience.
She has a voice rather deeper than one might expect, a low alto that can rumble, shake or soar. It has great beauty, but also great power which combines with an incredible stage presence to really reach the audience. Her personality, too, is infectious; at one point a woman from the audience danced with her onstage, arm in arm and face to face. Perhaps the rain was the best thing that could have happened, because it got the often too-polite Reichhold crowd on its feet and dancing in the aisles.
Eyes ablaze, green-sequined caftan gyrating and platinum wig flowing, Cruz brought us the essence of salsa — life. "Azucar!" she proclaimed over and over again, and sugar she was. Sugar with an indescribable zip! A zip enhanced, no less, by her excellent backing band, Los Del Sol, whose 11 members were more than equal to the task set them in accompanying a living legend.
Picture, then, a woman with a wonderful gift casting a spell from the stage over several hundred wet and joyful St. Thomians, dancing as best they can – swinging, foxtrotting, swaying, tangoing, win' in' up — young and old, every shade of the rainbow — and you will have a brief glimpse of a single moment in an evening which was purely fun.
Or as Miss Cruz put it, "Wowowow!"
Editor's note: Lane Sell is an Antilles School student and an ongoing contributor of performance reviews for the Source.
