Fonte: https://www.flickr.com/photos/statephotos/38832214941/in/photolist-22ayQ4r-215bWSS-22atfBg
Singer Gloria Estefan was born Gloria Fajardo on September 1st, 1957, in Havana, Cuba. As a toddler Estefan fled Cuba with her family when Communist dictator Fidel Castro rose to power. Her father, Jose Manuel Fajardo, had been a Cuban soldier and bodyguard of President Fulgencio Batista. In 1975 she met keyboardist Emilio Estefan, her future husband, who led a band called the Miami Latin Boys. Estefan became the lead singer and the band was renamed the Miami Sound Machine, before going on to score several Top 10 hits in the 1980s and 1990s. Estefan and her husband later produced a Broadway musical, On Your Feet!, which featured the Miami Sound Machine's popular songs.
As a child Estefan liked to write poetry, and though she took classical guitar lessons, she found them tedious. She had no inkling that she would someday become a popular music star, but music played a very important role for her as a teenager.
After her father’s return from Vietnam, he was diagnosed as having multiple sclerosis, possibly as a result of having been exposed to the herbicide Agent Orange while serving in the Army. Estefan’s mother, who had been a teacher in Cuba, worked to support the family during the day and attended school at night. Young Gloria was left to take care of her father and younger sister. She had little social life, and because she felt the weight of such responsibilities she turned to music as a release.
In recent years, Gloria Estefan has found another outlet for her creative talents. She wrote two picture books for children: The Magically Mysterious Adventures of Noelle the Bulldog (2005) and Noelle’s Treasure Tale (2006).
Even as pop music continues to churn out new stars and sounds, Estefan has displayed few signs of slowing down. She teamed with producer Pharrell Williams to create Miss Little Havana in 2011 and delivered her version of several American classics for The Standards in 2013. The singer and her husband also worked on bringing an autobiographical musical to life, with On Your Feet! debuting on Broadway in 2015.
That year, Estefan and her husband were both honored for their trailblazing contributions to music and Latin American culture with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2017, Estefan enjoyed additional recognition as one of five artists named a Kennedy Center honoree that year.
In 2018, Estefan became the first Cuban-American to be named as one of the Kennedy Center Honors. On 14 March 2019, Estefan and her husband were awarded with the 2019 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. They are the first married couple and first of Hispanic descent to receive the Gershwin Prize.
In 2020, Gloria Estefan announced she was working on re-recording her music catalog with Brazilian rhythms and four new songs on an album titled Brazil305. She released the first single for the album, “Cuando Hay Amor”, on 12 June 2020.
In April 2020, Estefan released “Put on Your Mask”, a parody of her 1989 song "Get on Your Feet", with the lyrics changed to reflect the importance of wearing face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2020, Estefan wrote and released "We Needed Time" as a musical piece to reflect the feelings and emotions the world was experiencing around the COVID-19 global pandemic.
In 2022 the Estefans brought out a new Christmas album titled “Estefan Family Christmas”. Emilio and Gloria Estefan say the album includes Gloria Estefan, her daughter Emily and her grandson (Sasha) they are all in the studio recording the album.
In 2023, Estefan was nominated for induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, becoming the first Hispanic to do so.
