Gloria Estefan is at home in Vero Beach, on the Florida coast. And on this particular morning, the singer has a lot on her mind. The Sunshine State has become the epicentre of the Covid-19 pandemic in the US, a hurricane is hurtling towards her house, and – to top it off – one of her beloved dogs has been in a fight with a raccoon.
“He’s fine now,” Estefan confirms, as we catch up face-to-face over the internet. She is warm and personable, and at ease as she shares the tale of the stand-off in her garden.
“For a while he stayed away from the area but then a couple of days later he started returning to the scene of the crime.”
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And the raccoon? “We saw it after the incident, limping a bit. But it was still there.”
Fights between animals are, let’s be clear, not the reason we are chatting. Estefan is promoting her latest album, Brazil305, on which she has re-recorded many of her biggest hits with a Brazilian twist. Conga is now Samba; Rhythm is Gonna Get You is even more infectious now it is infused with Brazilian beats; and some of her best-loved ballads, such as Don’t Wanna Lose You, are reborn.
Estefan, who was born in Havana but grew up in Miami from the age of two, says she has loved Brazilian music her whole life (she is now 62). So when she was approached with the idea a few years ago, it was a simple decision to say yes.
“It was a blast to re-record some of the songs three decades later,” she says. “It was tricky, as when things are so engrained in somebody’s mentality, you want to do right by them, but also be true to the new styles and rhythms and be in that Brazilian moment with these songs. But it was lovely to revisit them.”
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She approached them from a different perspective than when they were first sung, she says, as she has a “lifetime” behind her now. But the memories of recording them originally were fresh.
“I remember the day I was recording Cuts Both Ways [1989] in the studio and emotionally I was going through a tough time with something and a lot of that got on that performance. All those memories are very much alive to me,” she says.
She laughs recalling how on Miami Sound Machine’s 1984 breakthrough UK hit Dr Beat, it was she who created the signature police siren at the beginning of the song.
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“No one could figure out how to do a siren and when the guys went to lunch I went into the booth and took over the synthesiser,” she recalls. “I was like: ‘How the hell could you not do this, it’s your keyboard – how did I figure it out?’”
Some of her hits didn’t make it on to the new album – including Coming Out of the Dark, written following her 1990 bus crash, which left her with a broken back.
“We tried to go down that road, but I said: ‘I don’t want to touch this song, it has to stay what it is,’” she explains.
“It was such a big thank you to the fans and the music was very much a part of what the song is about, so we left that one.”
The new album does, however, include a reworking of her 1989 megahit Get on Your Feet – a song that recently found new life outside of Brazil305, when Estefan wrote a parody of it called “Put on Your Mask”, aimed at encouraging people to wear face coverings during the pandemic.
Her friend Aileen Marty, an infectious disease specialist, called to ask her for help in getting the message out.
“We wanted to do it in a funny way – especially for kids,” Estefan says. With her husband Emilio Estefan, whom she married in 1978, she has one son, the actor Nayib Estefan, 39, and a daughter, Emily Estefan, 25, who is also a singer. Her grandson, Sasha, is eight years old.
“My grandson told my son, ‘I don’t want to die,’ when he was still in school and talking about the pandemic. Kids don’t know what is happening and they immediately go to the most extreme. So I wanted to do something funny that would put a smile on people’s faces.”
The Conga Queen is already known for rewriting the lyrics to her own songs. “Some of them are unshareable,” she laughs, “they are way too extreme.” In fact, she and her younger sister, Rebecca, have talked about her sibling releasing a parodies album.
“We were going to call it ‘Gloria Estefan’s sister sings her hits in parody’,” she laughs. “It’s a fantasy.”
For now, though, all her focus is on Brazil305 – an album that has taken a little longer than originally planned.
“In 2017, I was about to go into the studio, but my mum got ill and 33 days later passed away,” she says. “After a few months I tried to get back to the studio but there was no way – I could not bring myself to sing and I would start crying. I am a firm believer that the vibe in the studio gets on the record – so I asked Sony to give me more time and they were lovely about it, and it was not until a year or so after, when I had grieved enough, I was able to get in there with joy. And I felt my mum helping me.”
For now, at least, there will be no live shows to showcase the material – but the pandemic, she believes, will lead to music reaching people differently.
“A whole new way to do concerts is going to come out of this Covid thing,” she says. “I think there may be an opportunity to go to a really nice venue and use multi cameras, like you were shooting the show, and then stream it worldwide. It might even be 3D, who knows?”
Estefan also hopes that the way artists make money from streaming sites will be updated. She would like to see “legislation that changes how artists can get paid for their streams, because it’s minimal. There are no laws ruling what they should get,” she says.
“It was arbitrarily decided by the powers that have the streaming services. Hopefully that will change for artists, so they can make a living recording, as right now I don’t think you can.”
Estefan herself would like to make a new album of original songs, but fears people have shorter attention spans today, so may instead opt for an EP.
For now, she’s busy working on a film version of the musical On Your Feet!, based on her life, which hit the West End stage last year, and is also planning an autobiography.
“I have been thinking about it a lot more now, and I want to write it myself,” she says. “For me, the most important reason to do it would be to share how I got through the toughest times in my life.”
The pandemic has allowed Estefan to take stock – she even released a song called “We Needed Time” inspired by it. And she hopes that the world will reflect on what has happened and be changed for the better.
“I would hope we would keep this experience alive and our children would learn some things not to do,” she says. “We have rediscovered important things – things that may have gone by the wayside, simple things like family dinner.”
She adds: “There was a pandemic in 1918, and it killed 50 million people over two years and slowly but surely we forgot. So maybe it’s up to us and our kids to remind each other to make different choices. And to do better things for the planet.”
