El primero de septiembre/September 1st

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Photo from grammy.com. Click HERE. 
¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Gloria Estefan! (1957-      )

A Cuban American singer, songwriter, actress and businesswoman with three Grammy Awards, Estefan was named one of Billboard Magazine's Top 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, among many other honors (among them a BMI Songwriter of the Year Award, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and a 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom). Born in Havana, Cuba to a middle class family, Estefan fled to Miami, Florida with her family after Castro's Revolution. Her father, who had been a soldier in Cuba, joined the military and served in Vietnam, retiring after the Bay of Pigs. He returned from Vietnam sick, and Estefan helped her mother, a school teacher, care for him. She went on to study psychology and French at the University of Miami, working as a translator at Customs at the airport for a while after graduation. In 1974, Estefan became a naturalized citizen of the United States. She married Emilio Estefan, her first boyfriend and the bandleader of Miami Sound Machine, the group with which she began her career, in 1978. The couple have two children, a son, Nayib (1980), and a daughter, Emily (1984). Their first grandchild, Sasha Argento, was born in 2012. Estefan's breakout hit was Conga, in 1985, followed by Anything for You in 1988. In March of 1990, her tour bus was hit by a truck near Scranton, Pennsylvania during a snowstorm and Estefan was seriously injured. She was flown by helicopter to New York and had two titanium rods implanted to stabilize her vertebral column, followed by a year of intense, painful physical therapy. She made her comeback in March of 1991 with a concept album, Into the Light. When she sang Coming Out of the Dark at the American Music Awards in January of 1991, she received a standing ovation as she took the stage. Her 1993 album Mi Tierra won a Grammy for Best Tropical Latin Album. Multiple award-winning albums followed. A Broadway musical, On Your Feet!, about the life of Gloria and Emilio Estefan, premiered in November 2015. Click HERE for a 2016 report on Estefan's life (and interview with her in Spanish) on Univisión.

For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE.

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