Gloria María Milagrosa Fajardo García

Pop and Salsa vocalist. She is a contralto.

Daughter of José Fajardo, a policeman and outstanding volleyball player, she emigrated to Miami a few months after the triumph of the Revolution. Her father was one of the fourteen hundred anti-Castro rebels who landed at the Bay of Pigs and was taken prisoner, later joining the American army and being sent to Vietnam, from where he returned ill with multiple sclerosis and mental disorders.

Gloria Estefan studied at a Catholic school in Miami, where she learned to play guitar and began her musical education. She graduated in 25th position out of a total of one hundred fifty-four students in her class. At that time she met who would later become her husband, Emilio Estefan, son of a Spaniard and Lebanese woman, member of The Miami Latin Boys, a salsa group with limited economic resources (all of its members had acquired their instruments from second-hand stores).

Gloria made her debut with them as vocalist at a party for Cubans at the Dupont Hotel, performing the song What a difference a day makes, back in 1974. This formed the foundation of what would become the Miami Sound Machine group, which had been created a year earlier under that name. Gloria Estefan combined increasingly frequent performances, her studies in psychology and communications at the University of Miami while working as an interpreter for the Immigration and Naturalization Service and teaching guitar classes three nights a week.

In 1976, the Salsa ensemble—already under the name Miami Sound Machine—records its first album, with one side in Spanish and another in English, including the song that would become its first major hit, Renacer, a song that remained sixteen weeks in the top position of the USA Latin music chart. Minor successes in Latin charts followed until 1984, when they managed to conquer the British market. In 1985 Conga was their great musical success and took their group to win the 15th Tokyo Music Festival in 1986. Since 1987, Gloria Estefan (who ends up being the oldest member of the lineup) heads the group.

Married in 1979 to Emilio (by the same priest who married her parents in Havana) and with him directing the strings of her musical career, Gloria Estefan's upward trajectory could have been frustrated on the night of March 20, 1990, when a tractor struck from behind the bus in which the band was resting during a snowstorm, on the shoulder of a Pennsylvania highway, near the city of Scranton.

The fracture of two cervical vertebrae forced the performer to undergo successive surgical interventions involving the complete replacement of several back muscles with metal rods up to eight inches in length to hold the damaged vertebrae and over four hundred stitches. Perhaps the months of rehabilitation and the resulting physical limitations rethought her musical style, as a result of which she receives in March 1994 the Grammy for "best tropical Latin album" of 1993 for Mi Tierra, an album entirely dedicated to the memory of her native island.

In 1994 she releases a new LP, a review of classics from American Pop and Soul of the sixties, but in September 1995 she returns with another Latin album, titled Abriendo Puertas, which features collaborations by Paquito De Rivera, Tito Puente, Israel López "Cachao", Sheila E and Luis Enrique, naturally with the production of Emilio Esteban. Success takes Gloria Estefan to the highest position in her career, making her the most important Latin music star of the decade, at the level of a Celia Cruz or a Rubén Blades.

After this Spanish-language release, and due to this Cuban woman's commercial instinct, Gloria Estefan's next album is Destiny, released in 1996, and in English. This recording is followed by Gloria!, from 1998, an album also recorded in English, despite its lead single being the song Oye. Nevertheless, Gloria also records some Spanish versions, such as the one included in the Oye CD single.

In 1999 she recorded together with Só Pra Contrariar the classic song Santo, included in the Brazilian artist's album. The song Cuba Libre was heard insistently during the summer of 1999, while Emilio Estefan appeared frequently on various debate programs on Miami television, where he receives the affectionate nickname Padrino, also the name of the city's most important limousine company.

In 2000 she published a new album, Alma caribeña, a kind of continuation of Mi tierra, but with more fusion. Gloria Estefan defined it as a "bolder album, with more fusion, made without creative restrictions. As for the music, Cuban elements predominate, with son and an old rhythm called caballito, but it also has some salsa from the seventies, Fania-style; Dominican bachata and Panamanian murga". Among the special collaborations were those of Puerto Rican José Feliciano and fellow Cuban Celia Cruz. She returned in 2003 with Unwrapped, a new album recorded in English with a strong load of ethnic sounds and luxury collaborations, such as those of Stevie Wonder and Chrissie Hynde.

She has won three Grammy Awards. Estefan also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and on the Las Vegas Walk of Fame.

In 2015, she received from the hands of the President of the United States the Medal of Freedom for her contribution to music and received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2017 for her contribution to American culture.

Gloria Estefan also won an MTV Music Award, has been honored with the American Music Award for lifetime achievement, and was named Songwriter of the Year by BMI. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and received Billboard Awards. She is also on the VH1 100 Greatest Artists of All Time list, and on Billboard's Top 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

Married to Emilio Estefan, she has two children: Nayib (born September 2, 1980), and Emily (December 5, 1994). The family lives on Star Island. On June 21, 2012, the Estefans' first grandchild was born: Sasha Argento Coppola Estefan.

Discography
Live Again/Renacer (1977)
Miami Sound Machine (1978)
Imported (1979)
MSM (1980)
Otra Vez (1981)
Rio (1982)
A Toda Maquina (1984)
Eyes of Innocence (1984)
Primitive Love (1985)
Let It Loose / Anything for You (1987)
Cuts Both Ways (1989)
Into the Light (1991)
Mi Tierra (1993)
Christmas Through Your Eyes (1993)
Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me (1994)
Abriendo Puertas (1995)
Destiny (1996)
gloria! (1998)
Alma Caribeña ~ Caribbean Soul (2000)
Unwrapped (2003)
90 Millas (2007)
Miss Little Havana (2011)
The Standards (2013)