BY LYDIA MARTIN

Celia Cruz, the grande dame of Cuban music, the woman whose unmistakable voice resonated of the rhythm-rich island itself, died at 5 p.m. Wednesday in her Fort Lee, N.J., home after a battle with brain cancer.

She was 77.

To Cubans on this side of the Florida Straits, her death is much more than the silencing of one of their homeland's greatest musical figures.

Celia was the very embodiment of a fabled, nostalgia-hued Cuba, an icon in nine-inch heels and sky-high wigs whose heart always beat to the sway of those long-lost palm trees. Her death represents the shattered hopes of every abuelo and abuela who prayed they'd live long enough to see the end of Fidel Castro.

''Students often ask me what I think will happen when Castro dies,'' said Gustavo Perez-Firmat, professor of literature at Columbia University and author of several books on Cuban-American culture. ``I say that whatever happens, it will have happened too late, thinking of my father and my grandfather and the hundreds of thousands of Cubans who have died in exile. Celia Cruz is part of that generation that you sometimes see the remnants of, walking like lost souls up and down Calle Ocho.''

Celia may have stood for that steadfast Cuban exile who can't wrench the pain of a lost homeland from their heart, but she was much bigger than just Cuba.

She was one of the Latin world's truest living legends, an international star who demanded the spotlight's fickle attention for six decades, through changing epochs, vacillating musical trends -- even the reinvention of her beloved Cuban son, one of the oldest Cuban genres that is the roots of most Afro-Latin dance beats, including mambo and salsa.

A hit maker to the end, she broke all the barriers of sex-kitten-obsessed Latin pop, making it onto Top 5 radio playlists just last year with La Negra Tiene Tumbao, a sizzling tune that blends traditional tropical with hip-hop.

To watch her move on stage, arms pumping, hips swinging, shoulders shaking, doing that skippity-skippity-hop of hers -- was to fall under her spell. She transmitted the joy of conga-pounding Cuban music like nobody else. The grandparents who remembered her from way-back-when were just as stirred as the kids who grew up listening to Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac and the Bee Gees.

''There can never be another Celia Cruz,'' said good friend Israel ''Cachao'' López, credited with creating the mambo. ``Nobody has her grace, her style, her voice. Like Beny Moré, she was born to be a legend.''

Cachao had known Celia since she first started going with her family to neighborhood dances featuring his orchestra at age 14. ``She was just a girl, with no thought of being a performer. But she loved the music. It was always in her.''

Celia grew up poor, in the Havana neighborhood of Santos Suarez. She would sing her younger brothers and sisters to sleep, but when neighbors started coming around to listen to that powerful contralto, she'd shyly shut the door.

When she was a teenager, a cousin talked her into entering a radio contest. She won, and from that point on, began doing the radio circuit in Havana. But not because she was dreaming of stardom -- she was studying to be a schoolteacher.

''I really loved to sing,'' Celia told The Herald in 2000. ``But I also did it because if you won, you would get a cake, or a bag with chocolate, condensed milk, ham. We were very poor. And all of that came in very handy at home.''

As she was graduating, one of her teachers made her rethink her plan. ''You just keep singing. One day, you're going to make more money in a day than I do in a month,'' she told Celia.

In 1950, La Sonora Matancera, one of Cuba's hottest bands, lost its lead singer Mirtha Silva, who unexpectedly quit to return to her native Puerto Rico. La Sonora gave Celia a shot. But for Silva fans, the young Celia was a hard sell.

''Nobody wanted me. They would scream at me to get me offstage,'' Celia said. ``My voice was very high in those days. Mirtha had this pasty voice, very different from mine. She would come out in Bohemia magazine wrapped in just a towel. I was very serious. But La Sonora took me all over Cuba and after some time people got used to me.''

Alfredo ''Chocolate'' Armenteros, who played trumpet with La Sonora in the early 1950s and appears on one of Celia's earliest recorded hits, Burundanga, calls that a major understatement.

''She went on to be the voice of Cuba,'' Armenteros, who was also musical director of his cousin Beny Moré's band, said from his home in New York. ``Cuba has given a lot of big musical talents. But for there to be another Celia, a lot of years are going to have to pass.''

When Celia left Cuba in 1960 with La Sonora, she was one of the island's leading voices and dearest stars. La Guarachera de Cuba, she was called for popularizing a downhome Afro-Cuban genre, guaracha, all over Latin America. But once outside her homeland, she was granted a bigger title: Queen of Salsa.

With the late Tito Puente, the Puerto Rican percussionist who ushered her into New York's Latin jazz world of the 1960s, she helped establish the modern Latin sound. Celia accepted the throne with grace even though she never saw salsa as anything but a tweaked version of the son.

''Tito always said that salsa was something that you ate with chips,'' Celia said. ``To me, it's Cuban music. Except maybe the arrangements were more modern, there were a few more electronic instruments. But it's the same music that has moved me from the beginning.''

After Puente, she worked with the other salsa greats, from Johnny Pacheco to Willy Colon.

''As a musician, she had a calculator in her head. Her timing, her rhythm, her phrasing were always impeccable,'' said Pacheco, a founder of the salsa label Fania. Their 1974 collaboration, Celia Y Johnny, which featured Químbara, one of her biggest hits, quickly shot to gold.

''I remember when we were recording Eternos [1978], we had almost finished the record when an engineer stopped us and said we had to start again because the microphone was backwards,'' Pacheco said. ``But then we heard it and kept it. Even with the microphone pointing in the wrong direction, she sounded great.''

The Queen of Salsa title reflected her expanding kingdom. Puerto Ricans claimed her, Dominicans claimed her, Mexicans claimed her. Into her late 70s, she was packing houses all over Latin America and in places like Germany, Sweden, Japan, England and Morocco.

And she managed to keep her throne by sheer force of voice and an indefatigable passion for the stage. Until December, when she was forced to cancel dates to undergo surgery to remove a brain tumor, she was tirelessly touring, spending more than 11 months of the year on an airplane.

Husband Pedro Knight, a dapper, throwback gentleman who never goes anywhere without a suit coat, was always at her side. She and her cabezita de algodon, her little cottonhead, were so inseparable he even accompanied her to manicures when they were home in Fort Lee, N.J., but they never had kids.

The two met when he played trumpet and she sang for La Sonora. On July 14, they celebrated their 41st wedding anniversary. Celia was the rare celebrity who didn't throw diva tantrums, didn't whine about the work and didn't trade on anything but her talent. Old School to the end, there was an unwavering dignity to the way she lived her private life. It remained just that -- private.

So much that recently, when talk-show star Cristina Saralegui hooked up with Whoopi Goldberg to plan a film project about Celia's life, some in the film industry scratched their heads. The collective question: How do you write a compelling screenplay about somebody whose life had no apparent Tina Turner tragedy, no Behind the Music crash and burn, no tabloid-worthy scandal?

''It's a story about a rags-to-riches talent that could not be denied,'' said Marcos Avila, Saralegui's husband and a co-producer, who has written a first draft. ``She wasn't necessarily beaten or raped, but it's an amazing story of a Latin woman, a black Latin woman, who achieved greatness through a lot of hardships that she always kept to herself.''

If Celia had down days, she never let on. Those who met her were treated to a warm, joyous magic that never seemed to falter. She was, after all, the woman who spread that trademark ''Azuuuca!'' -- sugar -- throughout the world.

She may have been called queen, but she was famous for her down-to-earth charm. If you met her two or three times, you likely wound up on her greeting card list. No matter how busy her schedule, Celia took the time to write a hello from Madrid, or a Feliz Navidad from Fort Lee. It was always in her own hand. She didn't have people or computers for that.

''We would ask her to appear in concerts featuring a constellation of Latin stars,'' said Eduardo González Rubio, a longtime Cuban radio personality on WQBA. 'She arguably was the biggest star, but she was always very simple. Everybody else would fight about the lineup, `Put me first, put me last.' But Celia always said, 'Put me where ever you want.' ''

Fidel Castro was the only topic that seemed to ruffle her gentle demeanor. On April 7, 1962, her mother died in Cuba. But Celia wasn't allowed to return for the burial. The government, which saw her as a traitor, did everything in its power to erase her from the collective memory. Celia Cruz records were considered contraband. They circulated anyway, and her freshest hits were beamed from Miami radio to the island's still-fervent fans, but she was always piqued by the fact she wasn't mentioned in music books published in Cuba after the revolution.

She made more than 76 records, won two Grammys and three Latin Grammys, appeared in several films (including The Mambo Kings and The Perez Family), collected honorary degrees from Yale, the University of Miami and Florida International University, scored a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame and was immortalized in wax.

But she was most proud of taking Cuban music to every corner of the world. Her biggest dream was to go back home, even if just for a last glimpse. But she refused to do it with Castro in power.

``If I wasn't allowed into Cuba to visit my mother's grave, why would I go now? I adore my country. I miss it terribly. But New Jersey is home now. It may not look like Santos Suarez. but then, Santos Suarez doesn't look like Santos Suarez. It's turned to dirt.''

The closest she ever came was a trip to the Guantanamo Naval Base in 1990, where she performed in a celebration that honored Cubans who worked on the base.

''She was crying the whole time,'' said U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who traveled with her. ``She walked over to the fence that separates the base from the rest of Cuba and reached through to take soil from the Cuban side. Then something eerie happened. She was performing on this very hot, still day. But all of a sudden, the Cuban flag starts to ripple. There was no wind, and the base's flag that was a few feet away didn't move. But the Cuban flag was waving. We were all astounded.''

Celia never lived in Miami, but she treated the city like a second hometown. For more than 20 years, she was the singing, pleading force behind the annual telethon put on by the La Liga Contra El Cancer, which benefits local Hispanic cancer patients.

In the 1970s, as Cuban Miami surged, her voice echoed through el exilio. ''Yo llevo a Cuba la voz, desde esta playa lejana,'' [I send to Cuba my voice, from this distant beach] she sang in a catchy jingle for WQBA, then called La Cubanisima.

''I called her señora twice over,'' said Candido Camero a conga great who played with everybody from Arsenio Rodriguez and Machito's Afro-Cubans to Charlie Parker and Dizzie Gillespie.

''Because she was a señora on the stage and she was a señora in life,'' Camero, 82, said from his home in New York.