Christian Salsa
The change to a religious focus was not easy and they lost many of their fans and found opposition among the members of their own faith when they suggested the idea of Christian salsa. They stood their ground and little by little they started to regain the confidence of their fans and fellow Christians, when they recorded salsa songs with a religious message. However, so as to concentrate in their religious ministries, Ray and Cruz decided to record one last "secular" salsa song together: "Adios a la Salsa" (Goodbye to Salsa) was a farewell tribute to the style of music which gave them fame and fortune.
Ray and Cruz founded over 70 Christian churches during the time they retired from popular music, which lasted about 16 years. However, hardcore salsa fans constantly pressured them to return to secular work. After considerable reluctance (they feared alienating their religious followers), they gave away to fans' wishes, and played sold-out return concerts in Puerto Rico, Miami and New York, to their own surprise. Even when specifying that these joinings were to be sporadic and occasional, popular demand for their music remained constant; the Ray and Cruz orchestra played to sold out crowds in the few tours that followed. They changed the lyrics of some of their old songs as to reflect their religious beliefs, particularly their old hits "Agúzate" (where its old santería references gave way to references to the Holy Spirit) and "Lluvia" (where an innocuous reference to a fool getting caught in the rain became a suggesting petition for the listener to convert to Christianity).
In 1996, Cruz published a book titled Cuando era un Niño ("When I was a Child"). In 1999, Richie Ray and Bobby Cruz held a concert in the Rubén Rodríguez Coliseum in Bayamón, where they sang some of their early hits together with some of their religious songs. The result was so impressive that they were offered a contract by Universal Records to record their concerts.
Read more about this topic: Bobby Cruz
Famous quotes containing the word christian:
“Our age is pre-eminently the age of sympathy, as the eighteenth century was the age of reason. Our ideal men and women are they, whose sympathies have had the widest culture, whose aims do not end with self, whose philanthropy, though centrifugal, reaches around the globe.”
—Frances E. Willard 1839–1898, U.S. president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union 1879-1891, author, activist. The Woman’s Magazine, pp. 137-40 (January 1887)