40 | FEBRUARY 22 • 2024
J
N
ARTS&LIFE
THEATER
Y
ou don’t quite expect
a stage musical
like On Your Feet!
spotlighting the life of Gloria
and Emilio Estefan and their
Miami Sound Machine, to
break into the hora.
But a bar mitzvah
sequence is, in fact, part of
the ebullient, Tony Award-
nominated production, which
will be in town on Feb. 24 at
Detroit’s Fox Theatre.
It comes as the show is
recounting the early days of
the band when, Estefan says,
“we would play wherever
they would hire us, no matter
what.” And in Miami, where
the two Cuban natives met
and began their musical
enterprise, there were plenty
of simchahs looking for
bands to play.
“There were a lot of
Jewish Cubans — Jewbans,
as they call them in Miami,”
Estefan, 66, says by phone
from Florida. “For me, it
was just exciting to play the
weddings, the bar mitzvahs.
I was just thrilled to be
making music with a band
and to see people happy and
dancing and taking them to
the point where they just had
a wonderful time and lost
control.
“We were playing Latin
music, dance music, slow
music. We were playing the
conga medleys on the old,
traditional Cuban congas,
and, before you know it, off
come the shoes, off come the
jackets and it was a free-for-
all.”
The bar mitzvahs in
particular stood out, adds
Estefan — who, along with
her husband, composed all
the songs used in On Your
Feet! whose book was written
by Alexander Dinelaris Jr.
“I would get excited when
the challah bread came out
and they’d say the (blessings)
and everything,” she recalls.
“I remember when Emilio
was playing accordion,
Producer of On Your Feet!, in town Feb. 24, talks about
the impact Jewish culture has had on her career.
GARY GRAFF CONTRIBUTING WRITER
A
Conversation with
Gloria Estefan
Emilio Estefan,
Gloria Estefan,
Gaby Albo and
Samuel Garnica
COURTESY 313 PRESENTS