Gloria Estefan Talks About Her New Musical, Latest Album And Her Role as Grandma Gigi

Gloria Estefan shown during a shoot for her first Spanish-language album in 18 years, “Raíces” (Roots) at Fairchild Tropical Garden. She’s working on a new musical with her daughter, Emily, and stars as Grandma Gigi in the DreamWorks movie “Gabby’s Dollhouse,” which opens Friday. (Photo by Gato Rivero, courtesy Estefan Enterprises, Inc.)

Miami’s Queen of Latin Pop is busier than ever. On Friday, Gloria Estefan will be seen in the new DreamWorks film, “Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie” as Grandma Gigi. A new musical, “Basura,” she’s co-written with her daughter, Emily, will get its world premiere in Atlanta in May, and the Spanish-language album she released in late May debuted in the Top 10 on Billboard’s Top Tropical Albums chart.

The 68-year-old, who just celebrated her birthday on Sept. 1, has plenty of musical balls in the air, but she said that’s what has always kept her going.

“Music is my motivation.”

Gloria Estefan describes recreating her childhood apartment and constructing a stage with red velvet curtains for the high energy salsa track “La Vecina (No Sé Na’)” from “Raíces” (Roots) . (Photo by Jose “Chepe” DeVillegas, courtesy of Estefan Enterprises, Inc.)

Front and center is “Basura,” the original musical that will have its world premiere at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre on May 30 through July 12. Ongoing workshops in New York and the show’s development suggest that a Broadway run could be in its future.

It’s the story of the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura, Paraguay. The musical is based on the documentary film “Landfill Harmonic” about a group of student musicians from Paraguay who make music from instruments created from trash.

“They came to Florida International University to perform, and it was the first time that we introduced ourselves to them,” recalled Estefan. “I got this random email from a Paraguayan woman, Kiara, who writes to me that I needed to meet the kids. ‘They’re coming to Miami.’ And she sent me a clip of the documentary about them not knowing that Em and I had been working on this for two years.”

The group is from an impoverished slum that is built on a landfill near the country’s capital Asunción. The instruments are made entirely out of garbage pieces found in the landfill where they live.

Gloria Estefan and Emily Estefan are co-writing the music and lyrics for “Basura,” their new musical which is making its world premiere at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre this spring. (Photo by Jose “Chepe” DeVillegas, courtesy of Estefan Enterprises, Inc.)

“Their message is so incredible,” said Estefan, about the orchestra that tours the world, selling out concerts. “Then they all go back to their home in a place that is so challenging and so difficult.”

The Cuban-born singer-songwriter said that she related to the young musicians and that’s what drew her to the story. “Music was always my escape, my catharsis.”

She had another motive for creating the musical, she admitted. “I wanted to spend more time with my daughter, and I thought we could do this together. And, at her age, she brings a whole different energy to the music,” she said about her 30-year-old Emily.

“It’s almost like an album from Emily and me because it’s all original songs,” she said. “We wanted to get back to creating songs, melodies and things that people will remember. Songs that will stick with them when they’ve left the theater, plus it tells this amazing story of these kids.”

Two Miami natives are also involved in the production of “Basura.” Tony Award winner Alex Lacamoire, who grew up in Miami and is a New World School of the Arts graduate, is music supervisor and arranger; choreography is by Miami native and former Miami City Ballet principal ballet dancer Patricia Delgado, who won a Tony Award in June for her work on the Broadway musical “Buena Vista Social Club.”

Emily Estefan plays one of the recycled guitars. She’s co-writing the music and lyrics for the musical “Basura” based on the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura. (Photo by Jose “Chepe” DeVillegas, courtesy of Estefan Enterprises, Inc.)

She had been steeped in “Basura” – not looking left or right.

But then her husband, Emilio, approached her. He had been writing songs for albums for different artists.

“He brought me the song “Raíces” (Roots) and said, ‘I can’t give this to anybody but you, this has to be you.’ I told him that I loved it and if one day I did another album  . . . I could not divert my attention from ‘Basura’ to start writing songs for a new album.”

What if he wrote the songs for her? ‘“Do you trust me?’ “ she recalled him saying. “And I said, ‘Of course, absolutely.’ So, in essence, he wrote the whole album.” Released on May 29 and recorded at their Crescent Moon Studios on Bird Road in Miami, “Raíces” became the singer’s first Spanish-language album in 18 years. It is the 30^th in her 50-year career.

There is one song on “Raíces” that Gloria did write. It is for her 13-year-old grandson, Sasha, who is the son of Nayib Estefan, Gloria and Emilio’s oldest child, and his wife, Lara Estefan-Coppola.

Gloria Estefan’s music videos for the album “Raíces” (Roots) were shot in Miami, including Fairchild Tropical Garden, pictured. (Photo by Gato Rivero, courtesy of Estefan Enterprises, Inc.)

“I wrote it even before we went down the road with this album.” Written in English “My Beautiful Boy (For Sasha),” the song appears twice on the album sung both in the original English and in Spanish, “Mi Niño Bello (Para Sasha).”

She said she wrote it after missing her grandson after they had spent time together at the family’s vacation home in Vero Beach. “And then he had to go back to school. So I picked up my guitar and wrote it in 15 minutes. I called and played it for him. I wanted him to be the first to hear it. And he cried.”

The melody, she said, comes from an African lullaby called “Drume Negrita.” “Celia (Cruz) had recorded it when she was in her 20s. So I wanted to bring this very old roots, kind of Cuban rhythm to this very modern song.”

The title of the album “Raíces” (Roots) has a special meaning for Estefan. “If you think about it, my roots, some of them are in Cuba, but I came here when I was two and a half years old. So really my roots are in Miami. This is where I’ve made a life, where I have all my memories, where we created a family, where we created a career. The only reason our music sounds like it sounds is because I grew up in Miami.”

The music videos for the album were shot in Miami, including Fairchild Tropical Garden, and the high-energy salsa track “La Vecina (No Sé Na’)” at a place that held deep meaning for Estefan.

The night she recorded the song, the idea for the video became crystal clear. She said Emilio got the inspiration for the song “La Vecina,” which translates to the neighbor in English, from his “90-something year old aunt that he talks to every night on the way home from the studio and knows the business of everybody that lives in every apartment in her complex.”

The “La Vecina” photo shoot was at Gloria Estefan’s first apartment near LoanDepot Park. She had a very clear vision of where she wanted to create the video. (Photo by Jose “Chepe” DeVillegas, courtesy of Estefan Enterprises, Inc.)

The next day Gloria returned to the very first neighborhood she called home after fleeing Cuba.

“I wasn’t sure that it was still there because the last time I saw the place was in 2015, when we took Ana Villafañe who was playing me on Broadway to show her. There’s a scene in ‘On Your Feet’ that is supposed to take place there.”

The video for the album’s second single was completed just before the apartment complex near LoanDepot Park was to be torn down. “I am extra happy that I was able to preserve it.” She said there were six apartments with people living in them and one that was empty. “That was the duplicate of where my Mom and I lived. So I shot one of the scenes in there.”

She said it felt like a full circle moment. “A lot of great memories and very tough memories flooded me, but I think it adds depth because the album is all about roots. So I really went back to the very first roots of my journey in this country.”

And, in the third stop in what has been a year filled with fate, Estefan talks about another drop of kismet from the universe. She had been sent the script for the film “Gabby’s Dollhouse.”

“I thought it was cute, but I thought, ‘do I really have the time to do it? I’m working on the musical and the album.’ ”

“Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie” stars Laila Lockhart Kraner, left, reprising her role from the beloved small screen series and Gloria Estefan as Grandma Gigi as they travel to the urban wonderland of Cat Francisco. The film opens Friday, Sept. 26. (Photo courtesy of DreamWorks)

On the way back to Miami from a trip to Los Angeles, she said one of those occurrences that you can’t plan happened.

“I’m in the airport lounge looking for a glass to put ice in and this woman points me toward the glasses. And then she says, ‘I’m head of Dreamworks Animation and we really need your energy for this film.’ ”

More connections and a meeting with the director, Ryan Crego, whose mother is Cuban, was what convinced her. She spent a month shooting the film in Vancouver in July. “We had a ball.”

And that’s what life is like for the four-time winning, 12-time nominated Grammy Award winner who is not even close to slowing down.

When asked about what’s on the horizon, there’s a film adaptation of the Broadway musical story about her life, “On Your Feet,” in the works.

With everything she’s accomplished and what’s still to come, “Raíces” (Roots), “Basura,” and even her fun role as Grandma Gigi, speaks to the heart of what remains important.

Instruments created from trash played by the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura, Paraguay. (Photo by Jose “Chepe” DeVillegas, courtesy of Estefan Enterprises, Inc.)

It brought to mind an experience that left her shaken while returning to Miami on a flight from Las Vegas.

“There was a woman with a baby about three months old about two rows behind me. After we landed, we were told to stay in our seats. A flight attendant, who looked like she was crying, really, came to take the baby from the woman. Then an immigration agent boarded, and they took the woman out. When we got off the plane, we could see her surrounded by at least five officers and the baby being held by a stranger. Where’s the humanity in that? All I’ve been able to think about since then is what happened there? It’s like I don’t recognize my country.”

Through her music and her work, she wants to be the humanity. Her projects, she said, are meant to show what she refers to as “different colors of a tapestry. They are beautiful because they are together and they’re different.”

She said it won’t be anytime soon that she’ll stop contributing – to “sing loudly about the values that are important, about love, about family, about the things that unite us as human beings.”

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com.