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Tuesday, Mar 21, 2006

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Posted on Fri, Feb. 17, 2006

Hot, en español

By CARY DARLING

STAR-TELEGRAM POP CULTURE CRITIC

Juan Esteban Aristizabal could be forgiven if he were just a little bitter.

Growing up in the war zone that was Medellin, Colombia -- the home of the infamous Pablo Escobar and his bloodthirsty drug cartel -- he and his family suffered personal losses. A cousin was kidnapped and killed. A friend was gunned down in a nightclub.

But Aristizabal -- who goes by Juanes, a contraction of his first two names -- chooses to not focus on the negative. "For me, it was the most beautiful time of my life," he says of his childhood. "[There was] my family and a lot of music around. It was during the '80s, and it was a difficult time with the conflict between the government and the narcos. [But] most people [today] have the wrong idea -- no, not the wrong idea, but they're staying in the past. It's changed. It's different now."

That he captures that feeling of finding light in the dark and hope amid despair is one of the reasons Juanes has become the world's most popular roquero, or Spanish-language rocker. Sometimes tagged as a Latin Springsteen or Bono, Juanes not only sells a lot of albums -- he has won 12 Latin Grammys, and his most recent disc, Mi Sangre (My Blood), has sold a million copies in the United States, spawning three hit songs on the Latin charts -- he has the humanitarian angle working for him, too.

Last spring, Juanes became a partner with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to help publicize the plight of the world's displaced, and Time magazine named him one of the world's 100 most influential people. (People named him one of last year's 50 most beautiful people.)

He is in the middle of his second Mi Sangre swing through the United States and lands at the Nokia Theatre in Grand Prairie on Saturday night.

But it certainly wasn't always this way. Though these days he flies into Los Angeles to perform in large venues like the Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal CityWalk, he recalls being a relatively unknown singer/guitarist who landed in Hollywood in the late '90s looking for recognition. He'd left his old band, the metal-leaning Ekhymosis (Bruise), back home and was searching for something different.

"It was a physical shock," he remembers by phone from LA, where he was in town to appear on The Tonight Show. "I was by myself, I had no friends and I just started from zero. . . . But being here in Los Angeles, it gave me the opportunity to realize who I wanted to be."

Inspired in part by much of the incendiary rock en español that was coming out of Southern California, Mexico and South America at the time, he decided to incorporate native Colombian and Caribbean influences into his pop style.

"I just wanted to find my own sound. When I was young, I was doing metal music and I just wanted to sound like anybody else. When I was here, I realized I'm from Colombia and I wanted to take those elements and put them into my music," says Juanes, who was taught his country's rhythms at an early age by his musician father and brothers.

At that point, Los Angeles had become the nexus for the rock en español movement. "It was really important," he says of the city. "[Mexico's] Maldita Vecindad and Cafe Tacuba, and [Colombia's] Aterciopelados, they were playing California, and that was why I chose Los Angeles."

While in LA, he managed to get heard by Latin-music producer Gustavo Santaolalla (now achieving widespread acclaim for his Brokeback Mountain soundtrack), whom Juanes had met briefly when he still living in Colombia and the producer had flown in for a music festival. Santaolalla took a liking to Juanes' blend of rock, pop, salsa and vallenato, a Colombian folk music, and produced his debut, Fijate Bien (Listen Closely), in 2000.

Sales were sluggish -- the album, like much of rock en español, fell into the radio cracks. Spanish-language radio leans toward traditional rhythms or pop, and English-language radio leans toward, well, English. But word-of-mouth and critical acclaim started to mount. Then came the seven 2001 Latin Grammy nominations and the subsequent wins for New Artist, Rock Solo Album and Best Song for the title track.

That's when his career took off. His next album, Un Dia Normal (A Normal Day), was the bestselling Spanish-language disc of 2003 in the United States. Mi Sangre has built on his popularity in Latin America and the U.S. by selling well in Europe. The album's big single, La Camisa Negra (The Black Shirt), was a hit in Germany, Italy, Austria and Switzerland.

Despite his global success, Juanes -- who divides his time between homes in Medellin and Miami -- refuses to sing in English to cross over, though he is fluent in the language. "For me, it's about content," he explains. "It's really important for me to sing in español. I dream in español. I live in español. I don't see the need to change. For many years, we listened to music in English, and when you hear an American singing in Spanish, it's kind of weird."

He also refuses to get explicitly political, even if he is friendly with reformist Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, performs concerts for wounded Colombian soldiers and policemen, and sometimes sings songs that deal with topics like land mines and war. "There's a difference between being political and being more on the human side," he says. "When I write my music and when I'm involved in these activities, I'm more on the human side of the conflict."

For fans of the genre, it's a bit ironic that its two big crossover stars -- Juanes and Shakira -- have their roots in Colombia while similar performers from Mexico, Argentina or Spain have not been able to break into visibility beyond the rock en español faithful. Acts such as Fito Paez, Cafe Tacuba and Gustavo Cerati were playing major venues in Latin America while Juanes was struggling in LA in the '90s. Today, he outsells them by a wide margin.

"They are really important. But maybe it wasn't the right moment for that music," he says, acknowledging that their time may still come. "[Rock en español] is getting stronger and, definitely, they are the masters."

Juanes

8 p.m. Saturday

Nokia Theatre

Grand Prairie

$29.50-$69.50

Metro (972) 647-5700

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