Jersey History: Celia Cruz
There’s a reason that in 2022 the New Jersey Turnpike Authority renamed the Forked River Service Area on the Garden State Parkway between exits 77 and 74 in Ocean County as The Celia Cruz Service Area, complete with a mini-museum provided by The New Jersey Hall Of Fame. (Cruz was inducted into the NJHOF in 2013.) She had fled Cuba for Mexico in 1960 but settled in New Jersey shortly thereafter, living out her days in Fort Lee where she died in 2003 at 77. Fidel Castro never forgave her for leaving Cuba and wouldn’t allow her back for her mother’s funeral.
Long hailed as “The Queen Of Salsa Music,” she recorded 80 albums (23 of which went gold), has her own stamp, and her own exhibit in the Washington DC National Museum of American History, administered by the Smithsonian Institution. She won numerous Grammy Awards, including a “Lifetime Achievement Award” in 1999. That same year, she was given an honorary doctorate from the University of Miami. In 1997, she told reporters, “I have fulfilled my father’s wish to be a teacher as, through my music, I teach generations of people about my culture and the happiness that is found in just living life. As a performer, I want people to feel their hearts sing and their spirits soar.”
Born in 1925 Havana, Celia de la Caridad Alfonso was a key motivating force for the popularization of salsa music in America. She joined the Tito Puente Orchestra in the 1960s and soon, with her flamboyant costuming and larger-than-life onstage persona, she became a superstar and an outspoken advocate for women’s rights. In 1988, at a concert in England, she said, “if your husband hits you, make sure you hit him back. If you can’t do it with your hand, hit him with the frying pan!”
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