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

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