Cuba Concert Turns Spotlight on Fiery Singer

By Jordan Levin, The Miami Herald

Oct. 25--Olga Tanon's concert at Hard Rock Live won't begin for several hours, but the show starts as the singer's giant motor home pulls up to the hotel entrance at the Hollywood gambling and entertainment complex. Out streams the Tanon tribe: Olga's daughter Gabriela, 12; her husband and manager Billy Denizard, grappling with the couple's two young boys; the children's nanny; Tanon's parents and assorted young people, all down from the family home in Orlando. They are met by a comparable crowd of publicists, TV reporters, Hard Rock functionaries and various hangers-on, all swarming the driveway, chattering in Spanish and blocking traffic.

Last to emerge is Tanon, brisk in tan camouflage crop pants and sneakers, long black hair tied back under a baseball cap.

"Where's my baby?" she demands, reach9ing for 2-year-old Ian. She hoists two hefty tote bags over her shoulder, places Ian on her hip, takes Gabriela's arm, distributes greetings and kisses to her three publicists, a Hard Rock rep and a TV reporter and strides into the hotel, entourage swirling. When someone offers to carry her bags, Tanon shakes her head. "They're not heavy."

You can't squelch the Woman of Fire, as the vibrant Puerto Rican singer is known -- not with a few dozen pounds (her father worked for a moving company, after all) and not with the pressure and attention churned up by her participation in Juanes' Paz Sin Fronteras Cuba concert in September. After the Colombian rock star, Tanon was the secondary focus of the controversy leading up to the event, outspoken and unabashed even as Spanish-language media in Miami turned a critical spotlight on a longtime darling of music-awards shows and the Latin-celebrity pantheon.

MAKING HISTORY

Tanon's resolve paid off. She opened the Cuba concert with an incendiary performance worthy of her nickname, shouting to the sea of people filling Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion "Together we're going to make history!" She electrified el exilio as she offered a greeting from a Cuban man in Miami to his daughter on the island. On her return, popular Mega TV talk show host Maria Elvira Salazar gave Tanon roses on the air, burst into tears and told her "Thank you, thank you."

"I don't know why I did it. Pure hellaciousness, I guess," says Tanon, 42, sitting in her hotel suite, Ian clambering in and out of her lap and tugging on her hand. Even still, Tanon crackles with energy -- face alert, eyes bright, talking in a precise torrent. She says she was the one who called Juanes and asked if she could participate, her offer inspired by memories of growing up poor in Puerto Rico, unable to afford concert tickets, and also by a Puerto Rican priest and friend who had told her that her music was popular in Cuba. Cuban reconciliation may not have been her cause before the show, but tolerance and independence were, and the negative reaction got her feisty Puerto Rican back up.

"What I never expected is that they would try to mix me up with something political that I've never been," Tanon says. "The fact that you don't think the same way I do doesn't mean that you can give me some kind of title just because you want. Because I'll never accept that.

"Why are you going to say I have to do such and such with my life just because you want me to? Especially when it's someone that I've always respected; then I expect you to respect me too. Yes, I am an intense person. I'm not going to play the victim here. But people have to learn to respect each other."

Juanes was deeply grateful for Tanon's artistry and strength of character. "Olga embodies the faith and music of the wind," the singer says. "Olga is the strength in her voice."

Tanon's concert at the Hard Rock last Sunday was planned months before the Cuba show, a benefit for St. Katherine Drexel, a Catholic church in Weston. Ticket sales slowed leading up to the Sept. 20 Cuba show, says Coral Gautier of Orlando, a church member who helped organize the show, but picked up afterward. Seated in the second row, the Puerto Rican-born Gautier said she admired her countrywoman's gutsiness.

"When you're a public person, and your career depends on what other people think of you, it takes strength to follow your heart," Gautier says. "People don't like to be singled out politically for something that has nothing to do with them."

OPINION CHANGED

Opinion of the Cuba concert among Cuban-Americans flipped from mostly negative beforehand to mostly positive afterward, and the Hard Rock's guest list is packed with local media. But Gautier doesn't believe Tanon was counting on the attention.

"I think she just wanted to be part of something bigger," she says. "It was definitely not a career decision."

As things turned out, however, the Cuba gig was not a bad career decision. Hard Rock is filled with Puerto Ricans, Venezuelans and, yes, Cuban-Americans roaring adoringly for Tanon, who enthralls them for more than two hours. She doesn't just sing; she mugs, jokes and plays up her personality and Latinidad, exaggerating her rapid-fire accent and lack of English ("Ladeeez and ch-ch-chenchelmen") and what she calls her "chuchi-chuchi," shaking her behind faster than her 20-something dancers shake theirs, then miming a limp; pulling her tight skirt down with a "Wait, wait. My father is here," and whistling at the crowd: "Hell-LO!! Don't sit down!"

Her songs, a mix of pop, merengue and salsa that often defy abusive or overbearing men, such as Mentiroso (Liar), the song she opened with in Cuba, and heartfelt rancheras, are a kind of Latin-music primer. She even dares to do a Celia Cruz medley, belting out the first notes of the Cuban icon's Yerbero for an improbably, comically long time.

Her family, too, becomes part of the performance. Several times, Tanon sits on the edge of the stage and invites Gabriela, in the front row with Tanon's parents, to sing along and jokes that her 5-year-old son Indiana, sitting on the side of the stage, is jealous. She climbs down to sing Mi Eterno Amor Secreto (My Eternal Secret Love), to her 90-year-old father, who suddenly wraps his arms around her, big hands almost encircling her head, their faces pressed together. The crowd eats up the scene.

If Tanon's music and life are driven by emotion and instinct, sometimes deliberately on show, her impulses still seem authentic. Gabriela, Tanon's daughter by her first husband, baseball star Juan Gonzalez, is mentally challenged, and some might question the decision to have such a child perform. But Gabriela glows each time, ecstatic.

Upstairs, Tanon had removed the elaborate black jacket that was part of her costume and put it on her daughter, and now she beams, eyes so bright they might be wet, at the girl's happiness.

GIVING THANKS

"My life has been very different before and after I had my children and before and after Cuba," Tanon says. "I think about how much importance we give to the plenty that we have. And how many people who don't have enough, make do with nothing. That touches me very much. I'd like everyone, without feeling guilty, to give thanks to God for all the wonders that they're lucky enough to have."

The enthusiasm of the audience on the plaza in Havana, estimated at more than 1.1 million people, made a powerful impression.

"With all the respect in the world for Cuban exiles that have suffered tremendously, I think it's time to change," Tanon says. "We have to learn to forgive. I take off my hat to people who, with so many limitations, have learned to live, to survive and, with all that, still want to dance and sing. That's why it's worth the trouble to do something so these people will get to know the world on the other side."

Another person in the front row at the Hard Rock whom Tanon greets frequently is Jose Silvero, 62, a baggage handler at Miami International Airport who saw Tanon the morning she left for Cuba and impulsively asked if she would say hello to his daughter Niurka, to whom he hadn't spoken in 20 years.

"I don't know why. She just looked so spiritual, so nice," Silvero says. "She told me 'Don't worry. I won't forget.' And she didn't forget. The first thing she did was greet my daughter. When I saw it -- I don't know -- I felt like I was floating. I never thought she would remember."

Tanon says she went to the airport determined not to be intimidated but filled with trepidation. She was reassured by Cuban-American employees she encountered, such as Silvero and a woman who gave her a copy of the serenity prayer.

"There were people who applauded me . . ., and others said 'Thank you, because everyone there is going to be happy that you're there. My family is there,' " she says. "I left with such a mix of emotions that I knew it was right."

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