HER GENTE

A Song of Love for Celia: Singer Celia Cruz will always be loved by Cubans, but to Latinos of other nationalities, she will always be cherished for the absolute love she felt for all Hispanics. (OSCAR HIJUELOS, 7/23/03, NY Times)

I met Celia in 1991, during the filming of "The Mambo Kings," in which she played a Cuban chanteuse, Evalina Montoya. Her
character, a nightclub diva, is something of a kindly surrogate mother to the Puerto Rican and Cuban musicians who populate 1950's New York. As such, Celia grounds the film with her very Cuban presence, that mixture of compassion and warmth and spirituality that we, as Latinos, so value in our friends and family.

If Celia was superb in that role it is because she, in essence, played herself, a woman of worldly charms, good humor and much wisdom, the kind of gracious lady that we would love to have for an aunt, a fairy godmother whose tender-heartedness works a healing magic on even the most troubled of souls.

Celia Cruz was buried yesterday at a cemetery in the Bronx. In life, she was as glamorous as any movie star, regal in her bearing (in her natural dignity she reminded me of another great singer, the soprano Leontyne Price) yet accessible to people. By all accounts she treated everyone on the set, from the principal actors to the lowliest gaffer, with courtesy and respect. She knew me as that fellow, the "son of Cubans" who had written "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love," that book about los m?sicos locos on which the film was based. Even though Celia was the world-famous singer, she went out of her way to congratulate me for my small accomplishments. And she did so with affection, as if I were a member of her extended family, the Cubans--and all Hispanics--to whom she often referred as "mi gente." My people.

Unfortunately, the film, though not quite terrible, fails to capture the magic of the book, which throbs with an abiding love of Cuban music and culture and several sex scenes so smokin' hot they're frightening. Be sure to check out the account of the services for Ms Cruz in Miami below, by Glenn Dryfoos. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 23, 2003 10:43 AM