Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks as always for clicking and listening along. Man, I am so excited to bring you my conversation this week with an honest to goodness music icon, Gloria Estefan. She has sold more than 100 million

albums during her 50 years in music. She's won eight Grammy Awards. She's in the songwriter's

Hall of Fame. I mean, she's got a presidential medal of freedom that she earned in 2015. She's

done it all. And for people who maybe weren't

around in the 80s and don't fully appreciate what Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine,

her band did with songs like Kanga, 1, 2, 3, the rhythm is going to get you. They kicked open the

door and made Latin music from her native Cuba and Miami, where she spent most of her life, into the mainstream and made it this global phenomenon that it is.

And you talk to artists like J.Lo, Ricky Martin, Shakira, even someone like Bad Bunny.

They draw a straight line back to Gloria Estefan, taking that wonderful rhythmic music fused with beats

and making it international and making it mainstream. She did all that. So she is a huge figure.

There's a reason she's known as the Queen of Latin Pop. She's got a new album out called

Raeis, which translates to roots. It goes back to her roots. It is her first full-length Spanish language

release in 18 years. It takes it all the way back to the soul of Latin music and that sound

that kind of launched her career. We talk about it all. I mean, her partnership with her husband,

Emilio Estefan, who she met in 1975 when she was this precocious teenager

with a great voice about to go to the University of Miami, where she did graduate while

singing in this band. They were called the Miami Latin boys at the time, but couldn't keep that

name with a female out front, so they became the Miami Sound Machine. And the rest is history. Family story is incredible

coming from Cuba. I'll let her tell you all of that. For now, just sit back, relax, and enjoy this

conversation right now. In her favorite Cuban restaurant in New York City, this is Gloria Estefan

on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Gloria, thank you so much for doing this.

It's my pleasure.

...