The Sound of La Vida Dominicana

The Sound of La Vida Dominicana

ON Friday evening the Dominican singer Juan Luis Guerra, the Latin Recording Academy’s 2007 man of the year, will take the stage for a Madison Square Garden concert fronting his 16-piece band, 3 back-up singers and 4 dancers. If past New York shows are any indication, the crowd will be electrified by his anthemic merengues on the developing world’s problems and charmed by his metaphor-laced love ballads, singing along with virtually every word. But in a sense they’ll be doing it all in secret.

That is because Mr. Guerra sings in Spanish, rendering his lyrics largely incomprehensible to many New Yorkers, including plenty who love socially conscious lyrics and appreciate a fine turn of phrase.

“I’d love to be more skilled in English, to get songs like ‘Ojalá que Llueva Café’ into English,” Mr. Guerra said, citing the song about rural poverty that vaulted him to fame in 1989. “I’d love it if Americans could understand Dominican culture, Dominican metaphors.”

Juan Luis Guerra

Juan Luis Guerra

It is a vexing musical problem. Diplomats speak through interpreters, books are translated, movies are subtitled. But music jumps language barriers more awkwardly: the catchall term “world music” is in most cases shorthand for “music whose lyrics we can’t understand.” Mr. Guerra may have plenty of non-Spanish-speaking admirers — his current tour includes stops in Stockholm and Amsterdam — who love him for his gentle voice, catchy melodies, booming brass section and beguiling tropical rhythms but who have little idea what the songs are about.
That wouldn’t be so much of a problem if Mr. Guerra’s songs were of the “Bésame Mucho” variety, which (in case you didn’t know) means “Kiss Me a Lot.” But with Mr. Guerra’s songs people are actually missing something.

in Miami

In an interview in Miami, where his tour started last week, Mr. Guerra, who is bearded and 6 foot 6, recounted explaining his songs to his English teacher in New York. “The song that most caught her attention was ‘Ojalá que Llueva Café,’ ” he said. “After I explained it to her, she said: ‘Americans have to hear this song. Sooner or later, they have to hear this song.’ She told me I had to find someone to translate it.”
Easier said than done. The gist of the first verse is this:
May it rain coffee in the countryside.
Let a downpour of cassava and tea fall.
From the skies a drizzle of white cheese,
And to the south a mountain of watercress and honey.
But setting the translation to music and performing it in English would be a bit like creating a Swahili version of “Born in the U.S.A.” That is most true in what Mr. Guerra calls his “social merengues,” many of which have become anthems in Latin America. Though they are about health care, poverty and immigration, with lyrics that have brought many to tears, they play the neat trick of also being danceable party songs.

his songs

In “Niágara en Bicicleta,” a depressing portrayal of public hospitals in the developing world, named for a Dominican phrase indicating a situation as hopelessly difficult as traversing Niagara Falls on a bicycle. The narrator faints and is rushed to an emergency room, where the receptionist listens to the lottery numbers, a nurse talks to him in language usually reserved for dogs, and there’s no electric power for an EKG. The chorus is classic Guerra: where irresistibly danceable lyrics mesh reality with fantasy.
Don’t tell me that the doctors left.
Don’t tell me you don’t have anesthesia.
Don’t tell me someone’s drunk the alcohol
And sewn the thread for stitches into a tablecloth.
Don’t tell me the forceps are lost,
That the stethoscope is off partying,
That The x-ray machine has burnt out
And the serum has been used to sweeten the coffee.

singer Juan Luis Guerra

The Moving in, moving on, merengue, bachata y son.
It was his record label, EMI Televisa, that insisted on doing a mostly Spanish version, Mr. Guerra said, but he said he felt that the English version remains better. (The Spanish version won 2007 Latin Grammys for Best Song and Best Record.)
Understanding the words doesn’t keep a listener from enjoying a song of course. Mr. Guerra himself was an incurable Beatles fan growing up, and their use of harmony influences his arrangements to this day. But he didn’t get the lyrics.
“Never,” he said. “I never knew what they were saying until I was older. Not long ago I started studying the words of ‘Eleanor Rigby’ with my niece, and I finally understood the song. I used to sing it and have no idea what it was about.”

Guerra's Music Mirrors Dominican Republic

Guerra's Music Mirrors Dominican Republic


BY JORDAN LEVIN

Posted on The Miami Herald, Fri, Jun. 21, 2002
One of the most beloved and influential artists in Latin music, Juan Luis Guerra -- who appears at the Miami Arena Sunday night -- is also one of the most independent, with a career that defies traditional commercial wisdom. The composer/singer, who brought the merengue of his beloved Dominican Republic to unprecedented levels of fame and sophistication with Bachata Rosa (1991), releases albums sporadically, is famously press shy, and tours

Juan Luis Guerra

Juan Luis Guerra he is devoutly religious, and his witty, poetic songs often tackle social issues. El Niágara en bicicleta, the big hit off his last album, Ni es lo mismo, ni es igual (1988), compared the trials of going to a Third World hospital with crossing the famous Niagara Falls on a bicycle.