On and Off The Island

Gloria Estefan’s new all-Spanish album, “Alma Caribena,” has been No. 1 on the Billboard Latin album chart since its release two weeks ago.

Understand, please, that she doesn’t have to make records anymore. She’s made 20 of them now, three in Spanish. Her salary from royalties alone is more than $7 million a year, according to Forbes magazine, with husband Emilio making an additional $6 million a year from producer credits and profits from their Crescent Moon music studios, and $5 million in artist management fees. Their estimated net worth is more than $200 million. (Gloria does not brag about the money, but Emilio does.)

Gloria, 42, is much more likely to say she’s happy to be alive, especially after a near-fatal bus crash in 1990 that left her with two titanium rods in her back; she feels the screws in her skin whenever she sits in a hard-backed chair. She says it reminds her she’s lucky to be alive. She’s in love. Has two great kids. And says she makes music these days because it brings her joy.

And this album, a rich, folky blend of various traditional Afro-Caribbean styles, is nothing like the more commercial, English-language pop she’s known for. It is the music she says she most loves.

She wants to talk about it. In a telephone interview from Miami, she makes it sound easy, intimate, friendly--just two girlfriends chatting, about music, Cuba, family, Miami, chakras. And, por supuesto, little Elian.

Some may have seen Estefan on CNN, standing in front of Elian Gonzalez’s uncle’s house in Miami not too long ago. They also may have seen her in various TV interviews, talking about Cuba, no matter what the question was about.

In a culture increasingly obsessed with all things Cuban, Estefan has become more than an entertainer. She has written political opinion pieces for the Miami Herald, been a frequent talk radio guest on political issues and has a direct phone number for Janet Reno, making Estefan sort of the all-purpose Cuban American. When Cuban President Fidel Castro’s daughter and granddaughter defected, they sought comfort from Estefan, who has hired the granddaughter as a dancer for her touring group.

Estefan comes to this position naturally. Her father was the personal bodyguard for the wife of Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban leader Castro overthrew in 1959. Her father was also a tank commander in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, and spent a year and a half as a prisoner there. He volunteered for Vietnam and died from exposure to Agent Orange. Gloria, just a kid, watched him die in his bed.

Estefan turned to music to escape pain--of exile, of loss. But even now, when all seems perfect in her life, the pain returns. To be an exile from anywhere is to live with the perpetual ghost itch of an amputee, knowing what was there and is now gone, forever.

She says this album was made in mind of the torch songs her Cuban grandmother loved and taught her to sing in their small shared house in a poor neighborhood in Miami.

Question: This album is a big change for you musically--very acoustic, mellow, lush. What are you trying to say with it?

Answer: It’s the other side of the spectrum for me from the last album [disco and dance music in English], that’s for sure--which is great, I think. Because that’s who I am. We’ve been wanting to do [another Spanish album] since [1993’s] “Mi Tierra.” . . . On this new one we wanted to be more experimental, more free, more modern, with different types of arrangements that didn’t depend on one period of time. We have some really interesting fusions.

Q: Are people making comparisons in the sound of your new album to the Buena Vista Social Club album?

A: You know, a lot of journalists have been asking me about that. This has nothing to do with that. For one thing, we’ve been working on this album for four years. For another, these aren’t old songs. These are all new songs. Original songs.

Q: Can you live a normal life in Miami?

A: Sure. Probably more so than anybody would ever imagine.

I once had this photographer here from Life magazine, and she wanted to do a day-in-the-life-of-Gloria type of thing, and I was kidding around with her. I have a sarcastic sense of humor, and not everybody gets it. She asked what my normal morning was like and I said, “Well, why don’t you get a shot of me at the top of the stairs when I come down for breakfast in my feathered boa with my martini?” And she said “OK.”

Jesus, it’s just what people think we do. In reality, I’m a mommy. I get up early and we take Emily to school. Then we work out, Emilio and I. It’s the only time we spend together, really.

Q: Really? The image that’s out there is that you’re always together, that he masterminds your whole career.

A: Oh, no. He works like an animal. People think we’re always together. We have lunch here, he goes to do his thing, I go to do mine. We do different things. The stuff he hates, I do.

Q: Like what?

A: He hates finances. I handle a lot of that. I take the meetings with the businesspeople. He hates that part. He is an amazing idea person, creative. He’ll say, “Check out the hook for this song,” and it’s always great. He’s an incredible innovator.

Q: You know, most people automatically assume you’re the creative side and he’s all business. You hear it all the time: “Emilio Estefan is a great businessman.” You think there’s some sexism there?

A: Probably. Emilio’s a great manager, a great writer, a great producer. He’s super-organized. He’s on time with the budget, makes a great creative atmosphere. But I do the estate planning. I always ask him what he thinks, but I micro-manage every detail of the business side. I think that’s why we have what we have. Separately, we would have been successful, I’m sure, at different things.

Q: Does it bother you that people make these assumptions and it gets repeated all over the press?

A: No, not really. I don’t care what they think. There’s no way I could possibly survive in this business if I did. I have no ego about it. That’s what freedom of speech is all about. Once you’re out there, you better have a thick skin.

Q: Speaking of freedom of speech, you came under fire in Miami for advocating freedom of speech, didn’t you?

A: You’re talking about the radio thing?

Q: Yes. Can you explain that?

A: I wrote a piece for the [Miami] Herald about people’s rights to think and say what they want in this country, and some people in the Cuban community here, a very small minority, didn’t like that very much.

Q: You were defending a politician who spoke out in favor of Cuban musicians being allowed to play in Miami?

A: Right. She should have been allowed to say whatever she wanted without being punished for it. I might not agree with her, I would not go to the concert, but she has that right.

Q: Didn’t they go on air and call you a Communist?

A: Yes. Me! A Communist? Can you believe that?

I had to listen to this garbage and it was so totally bull, and you realize in the long run it doesn’t matter. In the long run they saw my point. I went on the show and talked to them logically. I’m glad I did that. As a human being, I would have hated it if I didn’t.

Just because I’m a celebrity doesn’t mean I’m not also a person. At the University of Miami I had a double major, in psychology and communications, and a French minor. And that’s sort of how I see my job, as a communicator.

There was one course that really changed my life, on the literature of the Holocaust. Studying psychology, I was curious as to how humans could do something like that to each other. I would leave that class crying every day. The one thing I took from that class was that silence is a very dangerous thing. If you’re in a position where you can say something and contribute to a better type of situation, then you should.

Q: Interesting you say it that way, because, as you know, a lot of mainstream America seems to see the Miami Cubans as just short of fascists themselves, especially lately, after the Elian thing. One question for you: What on Earth were you doing out there in front of that house in Little Havana, on CNN? Chica, I couldn’t believe I saw you there.

A: It was not something I had looked to do. I was asked to. That day, I had spoken to Janet Reno by phone. I called her. Both times I called her, she called me back within five minutes. . . .

I asked her if there was anything I could do to help. We had met in Washington, and she said she’d seen the whole thing about the letter in the Herald, and she said she was proud of me. She said perhaps if there’s a way for you to make the father feel welcome, and create a unity in the community around that. . . .

So I went there to avoid violence in the community. All of the people in the Cuban community here listen to me. They know I have no agenda. I knew they would take it for what it was, a mother and a concerned Cuban American. We’ve all learned a lot from this.

The U.S. is still very naive about a lot of what goes on in Cuba with Castro. But we [exiles] are no longer naive about the United States. Things were handled badly all around, from beginning to end.

Q: I know this all means a lot to you, and to many people in Miami, but honestly, having traveled as much as you do, how much do you think the rest of the country really cares about Cuba?

A: I think it’s clear that people really don’t care. They don’t have a reason to even think about Cuba. . . .

Q: Interesting. It didn’t used to be that way. Cubans used to be America’s little Latino darlings. What’s changed?

A: First, I think that maybe [mainstream Americans] feel a little uncomfortable dealing with the passionate nature of Cubans. We’re loud. It’s like they think loudness is violence. Hello? I guess it’s the way we come across. I don’t know.

From a business perspective, there’s definitely a business reason for all of this happening now, for sure. People want to get into Cuba. They think the Cuban lobby is keeping them out of there. I wonder what’s going to happen.

Q: Do you feel Cuban, or American, then?

A: I feel Cuban American. I have the best of both worlds. I have a Cuban heart and an American head. It’s a good balance.