Juan Luis Guerra

Before dedicating himself to music, Dominican composer/singer Juan Luis Guerra was a student of literature and philosophy who spent his youth listening to artists like the Beatles and Cuban troubadour Pablo Milanés. He traveled to the U.S. to study composition and arranging on a scholarship at the Berklee School of Music in Boston (now the Berklee College), where he attained extraordinary jazz harmony and production skills, and which he wanted to inject into the music of his homeland.

Upon returning to the Dominican Republic Guerra formed his group 440 in the 1980s and proceeded to revolutionize the Dominican merengue, incorporating contemporary pop and jazz elements and sophisticated lyrics into his concept genre: a merengue to inspire dance and social conscience. While his first recording, Soplando, didn't live up to its expectations (as audiences and critics found that the jazz and vocalese elements were a bit over the top), his third recording, Ojalá Que Llueva Café, hit the nail on the head: He found the ideal combination of infectious dance music with lyrics that offered something more profound than the merengue of his predecessors. Guerra's seminal 1989 album, Bachata Rosa, almost single-handedly brought the obscure form known as bachata into the international spotlight and put him at the helm of the Latin music world's hottest "new" trend.

Guerra's lyrics are bathed in the metaphorical richness of his literary upbringing, and his musical tastes and influences are as diverse as they come. His subsequent albums also included other musical styles such as salsa (in Areito, which featured a brief appearance by Salsa icon Rubén Blades) as well as the traditional merengue típico (on the album Fogaraté, which includes the participation of accordionist Francisco Ulloa).
After overcoming a near-fatal illness, Guerra has since devoted himself to Chirstian sensibilities in his lyrics, but his music is still as powerful as ever to inspire dance. —Rebeca Mauleon