Gloria Estefan

Ten hit-packed years after “Conga” danced its way into the Top Ten, Epic superstar Gloria Estefan unveils her new album, DESTINY: a delightfully tuneful and rhythmic package which the singer calls “musically, a place we’ve been working towards for a long time.”

After Into the Light–her last collection of original English-language material, released in January, 1991–Gloria Estefan embarked on an adventurous journey through her musical heritage. In 1993, mi tierra explored classic Cuban music; 1994’s Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me was a collection of some of her favorite pop and rock classics. In 1995 she released Abriendo Puertas, a Spanish-language pop-dance album drawing on many different Latin musical forms. Also released during these remarkably productive five years were Gloria’s Greatest Hits (1992) and the holiday-themed Christmas Through Your Eyes (1993). Through it all, Destiny was in the works.

“When we finished Into the Light, we actually started working on what would become Destiny,” Gloria explains. “We had the intention of continuing to do this album while at the same time working on a Spanish-language album that we had envisioned for a couple of years. The plan at that time was to have a baby, do the Spanish record, finish Destiny, and tour.”

Things didn’t quite work out as planned. The pregnancy planned by Gloria and husband Emilio Estefan, Jr. was delayed until the singer had recovered from back injuries sustained in a 1990 bus accident. But the Spanish-language album, mi tierra, turned into an international hit: It sold more than four million copies worldwide (including platinum sales in the US), and earned its creator her first Grammy Award (for Best Tropical Latin Album). In Spain, mi tierra became the best-selling album in the country’s history–while Destiny remained in the early develop- mental stage.

“Then I got pregnant,” says Gloria. “So we postponed this album once again, thinking I wasn’t going to tour being pregnant. That’s why I did Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me–which was going to be something I did later on. But I thought it was a good opportunity while I was pregnant to do make an album that was fun to do and that I wasn’t going to have to tour on.”

Along came baby Emily in 1994. Destiny still gestated.

“And then,” says Gloria, “came Abriendo Puertas.” This second album of Spanish-language material earned the artist her second Grammy Award for Best Tropical Latin Album. It spun off two #1 Dance hits, “Abriendo Puertas” and “Tres Deseos”; and two #1Latin singles, “Abriendo Puertas” and “Mas Alla,” the latter sung by Gloria (with a 62-piece orchestra) for Pope John Paul II at The Vatican in her only live performance of 1995. The Miami Herald called Abriendo Puertas “a danceable pan-Latin American fusion, brilliantly built on improbable instrumental combinations and layers of styles and rhythms.”

“But all through that time,” Gloria explains, “I was working on Destiny.”

The album was worth the wait. Ranging from lush ballads to an official Olympic Games theme to a pair of hip-shaking party songs, Destiny offers some of the most soulful singing of Gloria Estefan’s remarkable career. And it’s set to a richly textured production that travels a world of rhythm, from Cuba, Miami, Trinidad, Jamaica and Colombia to South Africa and the Middle East.

“Where we’ve always really wanted to go is much more musically in the Latin mode,” says Gloria, “which is what this album is. For example, the song ‘Destiny’ is based on an Afro-Cuban religious percussion track. It’s all basically that Afro-Antillean feeling, and we wanted to bring the ’90s into it.”

“We used all original instruments. The chants you hear throughout the album are blessings in the Yoruba language, the language of the Africans who were brought to Cuba and left a really strong influence on the Cuban culture. ‘Chembo’ Febles brought special instruments that he used. Emilio played a fruit plate on one song, there’s a trash can in there, a water jug… Everything’s very organic. Nothing’s synthesized, it’s all played live.”

Destiny features some of the most sumptuous ballads in the Estefan catalog: the fiercely romantic “I’m Not Giving You Up,” the forceful “Steal Your Heart” (which sharp-eared fans will recognize as sharing the Colombian currulao rhythm of “Farolito” from Abriendo Puertas), and and the gorgeous, string-drenched Gloria Estefan/Diane Warren collaboration “I Know You Too Well,” which was one of the first songs written for Destiny. A particularly special song is “Along Came You (A Song for Emily),” written by Gloria herself for her baby daughter (who contributes a “baby rap”).

“It’s very personal,” says Emily’s mom. “I had ‘Along came you/to teach me about love’–it was just this thing going around in my head for months. Finally, one day I was alone at home and I just sat her on the bed, took my guitar, and the verses were so easy to write with her sitting there in front of me.”

“When I came to sing it in the studio, I wanted to hold Emily through the first couple of takes, just for the feeling. They had lit candles around the room, and she was going ‘Happy, happy,’ like ‘happy birthday.’ So I told the guy to roll the tape and we got a couple of little excerpts and threw them in for her, so that someday Emily could hear herself when she was a baby on her song.”

Amid the ballads and boleros of Destiny are two rambunctious party songs, “You’ll Be Mine (Party Time)” and “Higher.” “You’ll Be Mine” is a down-to-the-ground calypso, while “Higher” is a close cousin to the classic “Conga.” “Higher,” Gloria points out, “is like a real Cuban street conga rhythm. ‘Conga’ talked about that rhythm, but this is the actual rhythm of a conga.” The song throws in a sizzling Jamaican rap from toaster Mickey Bassie for good measure.

The album’s closing track is its first single and video–and a song almost certain to rule the airwaves this year. “Reach” is the official theme song of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games and another Estefan-Warren collaboration, one which began when Gloria was invited to contribute songs to an Olympics commemorative compilation. She put the project on a back burner “until Diane Warren brought me a title.”

“She asked, what did I think of ‘Reach’? I said, ‘That’s a great title’–but she had nothing else. So we sat down and wrote it in about 20 minutes….We wanted to write a folk song, really–we didn’t want to write an anthem-y kind of song. I like stuff that you can just play simply on your guitar. And then we made the grandness of the Olympics come from the arrangement itself. It was very simple, but that’s where the bigness came in.”

Olympic organizers were so pleased that they selected “Reach” as the event’s official musical theme. Gloria Estefan will kick-off her “Evolution World Tour” in Atlanta on July 18, 1996, the night before the Games begin, and she will return to the city to perform “Reach” as part of the closing festivities. The Summer Olympics couldn’t have chosen a better musical symbol than this multi-lingual performer whose work has been em-braced by music lovers from widely diverse cultures.

“mi tierra and Abriendo Puertas were very different albums, but they were very well accepted by our fans worldwide just purely for the music,” says Gloria Estefan. “What makes Destiny different is the English language, obviously–even the melodies are a little more Anglo, because they have to go with the words. But it all blends so beautifully that it’s something very natural.”

“I think this is the album we were destined to make…eventually!”