Unofficially, you could say that Gloria, 53, and Emilio Estefan, 57, own Miami. Officially, they changed the pop music landscape forever with a little song called “Conga,“ which hit Billboard’s pop, soul, dance, and Latin charts simultaneously 25 years ago, and remains the only record ever to do so. Without “Conga” there would probably have been no Latin explosion. No Marc. No J. Lo. And it’s safe to say there would be no Pitbull. All thanks to the unlikely success of “Conga” and the Miami Sound Machine, a band formed by Emilio in 1975. The song wasn’t straight-up pop and it wasn’t in Spanish, but there was nothing like it in America’s mainstream music universe. Cotton candy songs like Whitney Houston’s “How Will I Know?” and Lionel Ritchie’s “Say You, Say Me” topped the charts in 1985. No wonder “Conga” was initially deemed unmarketable by the suits at Epic/CBS Records.
The “Conga” beat first broke out in Europe in 1984. “We were in a club in Holland, and we had just finished playing the set and the crowd didn’t want to leave,” recalls Gloria. She and Emilio are sitting in the conference room at Estefan Enterprises, overlooking the city they’ve called home for more than 40 years. She still recalls Emilio’s suggestion to “do that conga stuff”—a medley of old Cuban songs they used to close their Miami gigs.
More http://www.latina.com/entertainment/music/25-years-after-conga and
http://gloriaestefanthelatindiva.blogspot.com/2009/08/miami-sound-machine-gonga-its-beat-that.html
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