There's something radical about hearing Gloria Estefan sing in Spanish in 2025—radical not because it's unusual, but because it's urgent. In a time when the Latino community in the U.S. is both more visible and more vilified than ever, Estefan's new album Raíces doesn't just revisit her musical beginnings. It reclaims them. It plants a flag.
"This album is an act of resistance," Estefan tells the Music Times from Las Vegas, following a rehearsal for her performance at the American Music Awards. "Más que nunca, it's about celebrating who we are, especially when they're trying to erase us."
That resistance isn't loud or angry. It's elegant. Subtle. Woven into boleros, salsa, and son cubano. It's in the choice to sing eleven original tracks in Spanish. It's in the song she wrote years ago for her grandson Sasha and in the one her husband Emilio wrote and insisted only she could sing. It's in a music video filmed at the Miami apartment complex where her mother housed a generation of Cuban women whose husbands were prisoners after Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs). It's in the joy. The dignity. The memory.
The other two are in English, "because that`s how Latino families communicate".
But let's be clear: Raíces isn't nostalgic escapism. It's empowering and a clear love letter to her life, to her abuela, her mamá, her life and music partner Emilio Estefan, her children Nayib and Emily, Latin music and her fans.
It's also a celebration of 50 iconic years at the top of Latin music and opening the way for more and more Latino artists.
"You won't erase us."
Throughout her five-decade career, Estefan has walked the fine line between pop accessibility and cultural specificity. She's been the face of crossover. She's brought Latin rhythms to white suburban living rooms. But in this moment—where Latino identity is being weaponized by U.S. politicians—she's chosen to stand even firmer in her roots.
"We're close to being a quarter of the U.S. population," she says. "And yet they use us as a scare tactic, to win votes. That breaks my heart."
"We believed in the dream..."
Estefan and her husband Emilio were, for decades, what many would call Cuban conservatives—staunch anti-Castro exiles who believed deeply in the American promise. They voted Republican. They supported the free market, family values, and strong defense. But the past decade changed everything.
"When you see the very people you've defended turn around and villainize your community—how do you stay quiet?" she asks. "We believed in this country. We still do. But it has to live up to its ideals."
In 2010, the Estefans opened their Miami Beach home to host a fundraiser for immigration reform. In 2020, they spoke out against the cruel separation of migrant families. And in 2025, Raíces speaks even louder than any statement they've made.
It's a record born not from headlines, but from flesh, blood and memory. Its stories—of exile, family, resilience—are told through songs. One moment it's a playful salsa about a neighborhood gossip inspired by Emilio's elderly aunt; the next, it's a lullaby written for her grandson, Sasha, after a beach day together in Vero Beach left her heart cracked open with tenderness.
"I wrote it with tears in my eyes," she says. "I picked up the guitar, and it just poured out."
A marriage written in music
One of the quiet revelations of Raíces is how deeply it documents a love story—the one between Gloria and Emilio, now together nearly 50 years. Though much of the songwriting is Emilio's, the songs feel like letters between two people who know every scar, every triumph, and every compromise.
"Sometimes Emilio would say, 'I wrote this love song for you.' And I'd say, 'A ver, ¿me la vas a cantar?'" Gloria laughs. "He's shy about singing, but his lyrics... they're everything we've lived."
The track "Cómo Pasó" is one of the most emotional: a meditative look at a lifelong partnership, not from its fiery beginning, but from the long road after—the decades, the children, the aging, the gratitude. It's the kind of grown-up love song few artists get to write, and fewer still record with such honesty.
There's no posturing in Raíces. No trend-chasing. No autotune. Just the heartbeat of a woman who's seen it all and still believes in singing from the soul.
Emilio wrote the album for a lapse of two years. By the time Gloria entered the studio to record the songs "they were in my bones, under my skin."
From El Cuartelito to the world
The story of Gloria Estefan is already the stuff of American legend. Born in Havana, raised in Miami, she rose from local wedding band singer to global superstar with "Conga," a hit written on a plane between Holland and the U.K., after a club crowd went wild for the improvised percussion jam that became "Dr. Beat."
But the deeper story starts in "El Cuartelito"—a modest apartment complex in Miami where Gloria and her mother lived with other Cuban exiles. Her mother convinced the developer to rent to single women with children whose husbands were political prisoners. That complex, which housed Gloria's first memories in the U.S., appears now in the video for "La Vecina."
"It's funny, the song is humorous, about a gossiping neighbor," she says. "But filming there—where it all started—was very emotional. Full circle."
Estefan has spent her life making space for others—helping young Latino artists, pushing back against an industry that once told her "Latin music doesn't sell." She never yelled. She just proved them wrong.
Singing with ancestors
If there's a spiritual core to Raíces, it's the idea that music carries voices beyond the living.
"My grandmother still speaks through me. My mother too," Estefan says. "When I open my mouth to sing, I carry their words, their memories, their strength."
That, perhaps, is what no AI, no digital simulation, no algorithm can ever replicate. This album could only be sung by someone who has lived its truth.
"Hoy el hoy nunca va a poder hacer un disco como este," she says firmly. Today's tech can mimic sounds, but not feeling. "They can clone a voice, pero no pueden ponerle el alma."
What comes next?
Though Raíces feels like a culmination, Gloria Estefan is far from done. She's been writing the musical BASURA for the past three years with her daughter, set to premiere in May 2026. She's also starring as Grandma Gigi in an upcoming family film. And she's preparing a special vinyl edition of the album—with a second version of the song to her grandson, reimagined for a granddaughter.
But for now, she's content to let this album speak. To let Raíces do what it was born to do: resist, remember, rejoice.
"You know," she says, "people tell me Mi Tierra made them want to learn Spanish. That's beautiful. But Raíces... Raíces is for when you already know who you are. And you're ready to say it loud."
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