Gloria Estefan Reappraisal Month

[koganbot]

Jonathan writes over on Bilbo's Laptop:

["Mi Tierra" is] a hell of a song, and I hear more in it every time I return to it. It was even a minor hit on various English-language charts, including in the UK and Australia; and I have to wonder why it's not talked about more. Is the Spanish language too daunting? The Cubanismo too specific? Estefan

Comments

[martinskidmore]

He is a very busy man - Jonathan is going to be writing for my new comics site (going live in three weeks) as well.

G.E.R.M. (not the most attractive acronym)

[jonathanbogart]

Ha ha, I actually had a hazy plan of making November Gloria Estefan Reappraisal (or Reappreciation) Month on my (main) Tumblr, going through her albums one by one, but if this helps start the conversation I'm all for it.

I mostly think she's critically underrated compared to dance-pop/ballad-singing contemporaries like Madonna, Janet Jackson, and Whitney Houston -- not that she ever had Madge's strategic sense, Janet's R&B pedigree, or Whitney's raw chops -- but none of them ever had her facility with a wide variety of pop forms, a facility that Madonna at least, with her cod-Latinisms in the late 80s, surely envied.

Anyway, to talk with any more authority about her music, I'll need to listen to a lot more of it a lot more closely.