The future superstar, who came from a well-to-do family in Santo Domingo , grew up listening to the Beatles and reading Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. His love for poetry led him to study literature at the University of Santo Domingo though he later switched to the local conservatory where he learned Bossa Nova guitar. There he won a scholarship to study at Boston ’s prestigious Berklee College of Music. He returned to the an accomplished musician, well versed in jazz arrangement and sensitive to new musical ideas.

In 1984 Guerra formed his first group, 4.40, and released an album titled Soplando. The title means “Blowing” and is thus named because legendary Dominican saxophonist Tavito Vásquez “blows” jazz solos on the album. The songs were adaptations of jazzy Manhattan Transfer vocal quartet tunes sung on top of slow Caribbean rhythms. Nobody bought it; it was too smooth and classy for Dominican listeners, though it has become a classic today among merengue enthusiasts. Guerra realized that he had to appeal to popular tastes if he wanted to make an impact. In an interview with ethnomusicologist Paul Austerlitz, Guerra says:

“We once went to a record company and brought them our CD. They told us it was very good but that it would not sell. So we made a more commercial kind of music which is what we’re doing now, music that is extremely danceable and popular. But after we become familiar and people know about us, we continue doing our kind of music because it’s important. I believe that the important thing is to enrich merengue and our CDs are extremely good and complicated yet preserve our roots”

Guerra put the merengue rhythm at the forefront of his following albums and his signature merengue style was born. Slippery saxophone lines race through funky trumpet parts while the rhythm section keeps pace and colors the music with jazz influenced harmonies. His lyrics depart from the usual merengue fare, often drawing on the magical realism of his South American literary heroes, for example in “Ojalá que llueva café (I hope it rains coffee).”

His biggest hit was Bachata rosa, the 1991 album that sold 5 million copies and won the ’s first Grammy, for “Best Tropical Album.” The album, while containing some merengues, is notable for bringing bachata out of the countryside and into popular music. Formerly stigmatized as low-class music unsuitable for commercial markets, the slower, guitar-based genre has since taken the Latin music world by storm.

Guerra’s later albums are more experimental. With song titles such as “El costo de la vida (The cost of living)” and “Si saliera petroleo (If we had oil here)”, Areito (1992) was a more melancholy, political album that was criticized by some who thought that Guerra didn’t have the right to talk of the Dominican Republic’s social problems because he never experienced them. Fogarté (1995) focuses instead on musical fusion. It includes a track incorporating traditional accordion-based merengue, or perico ripiao, while another features. Congolese guitarist Diblo Dibala. Guerra, unlike many merengue artists before him, embraces the connection between merengue and African music:

“There are people who say that merengue comes from Spain. However, you can’t take Africa out of merengue. These rhythms are African, period. Of course there are other influences like the melodies and harmonies, which are European. The same happened with jazz, which was born from Africans that came to work and who learned the Anglo-Saxon and European songs. Out of this fusion, jazz was born.”

Quotes from interviews conducted by Paul Austerlitz, edited by Paul Austerlitz and Angelina Tallaj, and translated for Afropop Worldwide by Marlon Bishop

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Juan Luis Guerra

Caribbean

Dominican Republic

Jazz-trained merengue superstar Juan Luis Guerra has brought an innovative mind to commercial Latin music. He won the Dominican Republic's first Grammy with his style of "dual merengue": music for the mind that you can still shake it to Read more on Juan Luis Guerra...

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