Arena

Episode Synopsis

The Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz has been the most adored and dynamic singer in Latin America for more than four decades. Since she left Cuba at the time of the Revolution with her band Sonora Matancera, she has lived in New York and risen to international fame with the seminal Latin bands of Tito Puente and Johnny Pacheco the creators of salsa. To the Hispanic immigrants there, she is little less than a goddess, who still evokes the glamour of Havana in the 1950s, but back home in Cuba, like all voluntary exiles, she's persona non grata under the Castro regime. Tonight Arena presents a profile of a spectacular artist who invokes the power of the saints. With testimony from her friends, her dressmakers, her fellow professionals and the Spanish-speaking people of New York - and most of all her own stunning performance at the Apollo Theatre.