Of the twenty women featured on a quarter as part of the U.S. Mint’s American Women series, only one of them is a Hispanic artist. In 2024, Celia Cruz, that irrepressible font of pure sonic Afro-Latino joy for half of the past century, joined the ranks of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, astronaut Sally Ride and poet Maya Angelou in being so immortalized. Emblazoned beside her image, her trademark cry of ¡Azúcar!” is the first Spanish word to appear on any U.S. currency.
Pretty sweet.
You won’t find that singular exclamation of ¡Azúcar!” anywhere, the rallying cry that became a signature to Cruz at the exquisitely curated exhibit devoted to Cuba’s most iconic singer at the Hibiscus Gallery at Pinecrest Gardens.
Cristina Blanco, executive director of the Gardens, wanted to dig deeper than that when she put together the venue’s loving homage, which is on view through Sunday, Feb. 2.
At the venue’s Banyan Bowl, a centennial celebration featuring Cuban singer Lucrecia and the Celia Cruz All Stars band in three concerts on Friday, Jan. 31, Saturday, Feb. 1 and Sunday, Feb. 2.
Miami is the first stop in a yearlong series of shows throughout the United States that examines Cruz’s incredibly rich and varied musical legacy, period by period. Lucrecia, who, like Cruz, has both a rich voice and a healthy dose of large-hearted Cuban charisma, seems a natural choice for the celebratory tour.
In a telephone interview in Spanish from her home in Barcelona, Lucrecia talks about what the performer represents to her personally.
“Celia is the greatest of all Latin artists,” she says simply. “Celia is the bringer of light, the light of our Latino culture, to the entire world.” But in addition to the light that radiated through her music, Cruz brought a special warmth to the younger singer through the two women’s friendship.
“We always had a very lovely, very sincere relationship,” she says. The two met performing together in Málaga and formed a fast bond. In fact, when Lucrecia was pregnant with her son (Jan, now 23-years-old), it was Cruz’s special request that she be named the child’s godmother.
The challenge of bringing her to life was daunting, she says, both from an emotional and a technical standpoint. It was in 2018, she explains, when she was first tapped to play the singer in “Celia Cruz: The Musical!,” which played the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami and then the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts in the Bronx in New York.
She was honored but taken aback. How could she channel the artistry of a woman who, in addition to being a cultural institution and one of her greatest inspirations, had also been a friend?

“Our Celia is our Celia,” she says. “She is unique. She has a voice that will never be repeated, a flood of a voice that I would listen to and say, what a voice, what a huge voice.…I always speak of her in the present because her eternity is there in her voice.”
In live performances, it was a voice that could wash over you like a river, filling your body with the irrepressible urge to get up, move your hips, shimmy your shoulders.
Lucrecia spent six months of rehearsals in the run-up to Miami debut searching for every nuance of Celia’s voice: its cadence, its tonality, its inimitable ability to fill an audience with unbridled happiness. After performing, she heard a recording of a song from the show and found herself wondering if it was her own voice or that of Cruz’s. It was then that she knew she had it right.
“Just imagine it,” she says. “To be able to play her, to walk in her great shoes so that everyone remembers her and feels as if they have her there in the theater, all her followers, her fans, all the people who love her. It is an honor.”
The songs that Lucrecia will perform at the Banyan Bowl are those of a younger Cruz than the ones she performed in that earlier show. Classics like “Tu Voz,” “Yerbero Moderno” and “Burundanga” present a whole new repertory for her, and she says she relishes the challenge of interpreting the “golden era” songs that made the woman she calls “our queen” a household name in her native Cuba.
“Celia was born with her star,” says Lucrecia. “She made her way through her life with her star and her star keeps shining in her eternity.” With this year-long homage to Celia throughout the centennial year of her birth, she says, “We are adding to the eternity of Celia. That’s it right there.”
The accompanying exhibit in garden’s Hibiscus Gallery, an airy, bright space off the main entrance, brims with carefully restored photographs, memorabilia, and costumes —everything from a conga belonging to the Sonora Matancera to numerous pairs of the fabulous and futuristic footwear that Cruz wore when performing.
There’s also a huge blowup of a photo from the tarmac showing the singer and her bandmates departing Havana for performances in Mexico in 1960, the fated tour that would lead to Cruz becoming persona non grata in her native land.
Blanco, with the blessing and help of Omer Pardillo-Cid, representative of the Celia Cruz Estate, hunted down each piece collector by collector with the assiduousness of the museum executive she once was and the history nerd she still is.
Its focus spans the 1950s to early ‘60s, when Celia became a star of Havana’s epic nightclub scene as the female vocalist for the legendary band La Sonora Matancera. Blanco kept the show compact and fresh by telling Cruz’s story from the vantage point of “her golden era.” The singer’s early years with the Sonora Matancera, she says, were “the period that led to her exploding to become an icon.” She and the band were seemingly unstoppable.
“They created over 300 songs together. They traveled for 10 years. It is a lot in a short period of time, but it really showed her boldness, her femininity, her range,” says Blanco.
And Blanco, who carefully avoided mentioning “azúcar” in the gallery exhibition does see meaning in the performer’s famous catchphrase. Cruz, she says, “was never hesitant. She had a lot of positivity.”
Perhaps “azúcar” was not just a word, but a philosophy.
“When she said it sometimes, she was saying that even if life is tough or difficult, just add a little bit of sugar to it because life is beautiful and sweet.” At Lucrecia’s performance, if Cruz’s spirit should move you, feel free to shout “azúcar” at will.
WHAT: “Celia Cruz Centennial Celebration 1925-2025” with singer Lucrecia (as Celia) accompanied by the Celia Cruz All Stars. The concert kicks off the 2025 Tropical Nights live music series
IF YOU GO:
Where: Banyan Bowl at Pinecrest Gardens, 11000 Red Road, Pinecrest
When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Jan. 31, and 7 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 2
Cost: $40 – $45 plus fees
Information: 305-669-6990; info@pinecrestgardens.org
Related event: The Celia Cruz Exhibition is on view at the Hibiscus Gallery at Pinecrest Gardens from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. through Sunday, Feb. 2. Admission is included with general admission to the garden ($5; 65 and older, $3). The gallery will be open prior to the concerts; admission to the Celia Cruz Exhibition is included in the price of performance ticket.
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