Honoring Cuban music
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s kids give seal of approval to his animated musical ‘Vivo’
Kids is that they are not the greatest at filtering things. So if they say they like something, you best believe it!
If there’s something we know about kids is that they are not the greatest at filtering things. So if they say they like something, you best believe it! Lin-Manuel Miranda can breathe easy after his kids approved his latest animated musical Vivo.
After his success with musicals “Hamilton” and “In The Heights,” Miranda revealed that according to his kids, the Sony Pictures movie is their “favorite thing I’ve ever worked on.”
“I am so glad that your kids now will all get to hear the thing that has been playing on a loop in my house for years,” Miranda said during a special screening of the film, as reported by NBC News.
“Vivo” premiered Friday on Netflix and tells the story of Andrés Hernández and his kinkajou named Vivo. Through the movie, the dynamic duo embarks on an adventure that takes them from the streets of Havana, Cuba, to the Everglades in Florida to the city of Miami.
The computer-animated musical comedy-drama film has an all-star cast, including Ynairaly Simo, Zoe Saldana, Juan de Marcos González, Brian Tyree Henry, Nicole Byer Aneesa Folds, Michael Rooker, Gloria Estefan, Leslie David Baker, Katie Lowes, Olivia Trujillo, and Lidya Jewett. Miranda lend his voice to Vivo, worked as an executive producer, and wrote eight original songs for the movie.
According to the publication, after Gloria Estefan listened to the song “Inside Your Heart (Para Marta),” the decision to join the cast became a no-brainer. “This very song that Marta would be singing ... I just fell in love with it,” Estefan said. “Marta reminds me of Celia Cruz, who was one of my favorite people in the world, and I love that Vivo honors Cuban music in this way.”
Composer, arranger, conductor, musical director, music copyist, and orchestrator, Alex Lacamoire, worked on the musical number “Mambo Cabana,” and according to him, his participation felt personal. “This is a very happy, joyous song, but when my mom heard the chorus and saw the movie taking place in Cuba, she started weeping for the joy of just feeling that kind of representation,” Lacamoire said. “I just love being able to dig into this part of my roots, my family, my ancestry.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda considers that Vivo perfectly explains how “music and love are the exact same thing” and that “It’s that timelessness of love, the timelessness of music and the unlikely friendships.”
