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"None of this could have happened 15 years ago," says producer Emilio Estefan, husband and manager of crossover trailblazer Gloria Estefan. "Gloria and I went through the hardest part. A dozen years ago, a label threw me out when I tried to use congas on a recording. They said, 'Get rid of that, and take out the horns and the timbales too.' Now people are buying records by Arturo Sandoval and Buena Vista Social Club. The younger generation is now reacting to Latin music."
Because Latin pop draws from different cultures, it also has the power to bring people together. "Latino people have a golden key in their hands, a common treasure," says Colombian-born pop-rocker Shakira, 22, who is working with Gloria Estefan to adapt her acclaimed 1998 Spanish-language CD Donde Estan los Ladrones? into English. "That treasure is fusion. The fusion of rhythms, the fusion of ideas. We Latinos are a race of fusion, and that is the music we make. And so at the dawn of a new millennium, when everything is said and done, what could possibly happen besides a fusion?"
Puerto Rico is where it starts. It is an island inhabited by the descendants of black slaves and Spanish conquistadors; here cultures collided, rhythms intermingled, and salsa emerged, inspired by Africa and Europe and by New York City. Marc Anthony's parents hail from the island, and Jennifer Lopez, though born and raised in the Bronx, also has roots there. As for Ricky Martin, he was born in Puerto Rico, the only child of Enrique Martin, a psychologist, and Nereida Morales, an accountant (Martin's parents separated when he was two).
Look at Martin today, and you can tell he was a child star--he wears the spotlight like ordinary folks wear house slippers. Indeed, Martin got started early: at 12 he auditioned to join Menudo, a Latin singing group comprised of boys ages 12 to 16 whose roster rotated when members grew too old. Martin was rejected on his first try because he was too small and too young-looking. Martin tried out again. Rejected again. On the third try, he made it. It was an early sign: what Martin lacked in talent he made up for in pure doggedness. "He was small, not a big singer, and his voice was not so good then," recalls the group's manager, Edgardo Diaz. "But we thought he could learn a lot by being with the group."
Martin was immediately caught up in Menudo's vida loca. He visited Italy, Japan, Guam and Spain before he was old enough to shave. During one stretch, he and his young bandmates played for a month in Brazil (singing in Portuguese), then flew to the Philippines (singing in English) before returning to Latin America for a series of shows in Spanish. Life became a blur.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, Martin's homelife suffered--both his parents wanted to see more of him, and his father asked him to choose between him and his mother. Hurt and angered by the ultimatum, Martin stopped talking to his father for almost a decade. A few years ago, they reconciled.