About Juan Luis Guerra
Juan Luis Guerra Seijas is a Dominican musician, singer, composer, and record producer. Throughout his career, he has won numerous awards including 24 Latin Grammy Awards, three Grammy Awards, and one Latin Billboard Music Award. He won 3 Latin Grammy Awards in 2010, including Album of the Year. In 2012, he won the Latin Grammy Award for Producer of the Year. He has sold 15 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling Latin music artists.
Guerra is one of the most internationally recognized Latin artists of recent decades. His popular style of merengue and Latin fusion has garnered him considerable success throughout Latin America. He is also credited for popularizing bachata music on a global level and is often associated with the genre, although his distinct style of bachata features a more traditional bolero rhythm and aesthetic mixed with bossa-nova influenced melodies and harmony in some of his songs. He does not limit himself to one style of music, instead, his music incorporates a wide arrange of diverse rhythms such as merengue, bachata, bolero, balada, fusion, salsa, cumbia, mambo, cha-cha-cha, pop, rock and roll, reggae, classical, R&B, folk, blues, jazz, funk, soul, rock, hip-hop/rap, son cubano, and religious, amongst many others. Ojalá Que Llueva Café is one of his most critically acclaimed pieces.
Born Juan Luis Guerra Seijas, his parents were Gilberto Guerra Pacheco, and Olga Seijas Herrero. He has two brothers, José Gilberto, a plastic surgeon, and Diego Esteban, a graduate in business administration. He was a student at La Salle and Santa Teresita school, where he stood out for his love of sports. Before becoming interested in music, Guerra studied Philosophy and Literature at the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo. He later studied guitar and music theory at the Dominican Republic's Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Santo Domingo, and then decided to go to the United States to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston, from which he graduated in 1982 with a diploma in jazz composition. He then returned to the Dominican Republic and formed a band with local musicians from his community.
Guerra released his first album, Soplando , with local musicians who became known as Juan Luis Guerra y 440. The number refers to the standard tuning of A440. The band's name in Spanish is Cuatro Cuarenta . According to Guerra, this first album was based on jazz tunes and concepts he had learned at Berklee, and it "wasn't intended to be a commercial hit." Subsequently, however, he began to write more merengues.
In 1983, after a performance in front of the Dominican entrepreneur Bienvenido Rodríguez, Juan Luis Guerra was signed to Karen Records. This marked a radical shift in Guerra's musical style toward merengue. In this period, he recorded two albums, Mudanza y Acarreo in 1985 and Mientras Más Lo Pienso...Tú in 1987. These works gained more recognition, and the band was nominated to attend the OTI Festival to represent the Dominican Republic.
In 1988, during the recording of the album Ojalá Que Llueva Café, Guerra became the dominant vocalist of 440. This album also began his international recognition; the album's sales topped the charts in many Latin American countries.
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