Celia Cruz was born in the same year as my father (1925). Both my father and my mother, like most Cubans, have always been Celia Cruz fans. My parents raised us with sounds of Celia's radiant alto voice emanating from the living room turntables of our home in Cuba (where I was born) and later in New Jersey, to where both Celia and our family emigrated.
Twice, I saw the Grammy Award-winning Celia Cruz perform live in concert. The first time was in 1990 in my church in Harlem New York (The Abyssinian Baptist Church). Celia was celebrating her 65th birthday in concert. I took my dad and eldest brother José with me to see her. The second time I saw Celia in concert was with my children in 2002 in Hawthorn California, during the Cuban Festival. In both concerts, Celia donned a bright blue wig. Watching Celia Cruz rumba away in her blue wig, blue dress and blue heels, at the age of 65 and 77, while she shouted out "¡Azucar!" (Sugar!), in between brilliant vocal rifts, made goose bumps on my skin.
The orange flowers I painted behind Celia's blue wig are the Flomboyante flowers. They grow on trees all over Cuba and the Caribbean and are the national flower of Puerto Rico. In this picture I tried to capture the exhilaration of Celia Cruz's spirit, to which I am so blessed to have been exposed.
