MIAMI — Latinos and Miamians take their dancing very seriously. That is why the person who gets them moving has their eternal gratitude. They elevate this person to the ranking of a star and give him or her their hearts. Willy Chirino is one of those stars from Miami and Cuba. Now the HistoryMiami museum inaugurates an exhibition dedicated to his 5-decade-long career.
His song “Ya Viene Llegando” shook the island in the 1990s just like the more recent hit “Patria y Vida.” And in Miami, the dancing to songs like ”Soy,” “Oxígeno,” “Medias Negras,” “San Zarabanda,” “Soy Guajiro,” “Lo que está pa’ ti” and “Mister Don’t Touch the Banana” doesn’t stop. As soon as the DJ puts them on, the party heats up. You can see the mischievous looks on dancers’ faces when they warn, “Banana belong’ to Changó.”
On display at HistoryMiami is the evidence of Chirino’s status as a beloved icon: There are the awards he has received in his 50-year career; items of personal value to the singer such as the outfits he and Lissette Alvarez wore in their wedding day; photos of his baptism in his native Pinar del Río province; a snapshot of a young Willy with the band that he formed in the 1960s with a group of recently arrived Cuban boys like him, at the dawn of an exile that no one imagined would last 64 years.
