Celia Cruz was a Cuban-American salsa

Salsa music

Salsa music is a genre of music, generally defined as a modern style of playing Cuban Son, Son Montuno, and Guaracha with touches from other genres of music...

 singer, and was one of the most successful Salsa performers of the 20th century, having earned twenty-three gold albums. She was renowned internationally as the "Queen of Salsa" as well as "La Guarachera de Cuba."

She spent most of her career living in New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

, and working in the United States and several Latin American countries.

Celia Cobo of Billboard Magazine once said "Cruz is indisputably the best known and most influential female figure in the history of Cuban music." Cruz once said in an interview "If I had a chance I wouldn't have been singing and dancing, I would be a teacher just like my dad wanted me to be".
Cruz was born October 21, 1925 in the diverse, working-class neighborhood of Santos Suárez neighborhood in Havana, Cuba.