Today, Google is honoring the Queen of Salsa with a homepage doodle that her estate is calling “important and far-reaching.”
Celia Cruz, La Guarachera de Cuba, would have turned 88 today. The Havana-born singer died on July 16th, 2003 of brain cancer. Today’s Google Doodle is celebrating the day of her birth.
Cruz is known as one of the most influential musicians in the history of Cuban music. Over the course of her career, Cruz was awarded 23 gold albums, 7 total Grammys, the Smithsonian’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and the National Medal of Arts.
Her recording career spanned from 1958 to the year of her death, and in that time she put out over 75 albums. She also had parts in a handful of films, including 1992’s The Mambo Kings.
“There have been many posthumous tributes to Celia in these last ten years, but this one by Google is certainly one of the most important and far-reaching. The creation of her very own Google Doodle, an honor bestowed on a select few who have made special contributions to mankind, is a testament of her significance, not just musically, but culturally,” said Omer Pardillo-Cid, sole executor of the Celia Cruz Estate. “She would have loved it!”
Images via Wikimedia Commons, Google
