An Essay On Juan Luis Guerra

Juan Luis Guerra was born in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic who is a producer, composer, singer, and songwriter. In his music, he implements jazz, salsa, merengue, bachata, blues, Afro-pop, soukous (French, African origins), gospel music, etc. Some of his influences were the Beatles and heard bachata elements in songs such as “Till There Was You” and “If I Fell” and on “Till There Was You,” where it used bongos. He heard African musician, Papa Wemba playing with Peter Gabriel in NY. Guerra wrote his own lyrics to create “Vivir” song in the Fogaraté album and overall showed an influence of Afro-pop and soukous music. As well as bringing African guitarist Diblo Dibala and that is where he picked up the influence of soukous music.
Moreover, he started to play the guitar when he was around 10 years old. Later on, attended the University of Santo Domingo with courses of Philosophy and History and realized his passion for music resulting to transfer into the Music Conservatory of Santo Domingo. During that time, he received a scholarship to Berklee College Of Music in Boston. He decided to complete his studies and learned composition and musical arrangement and graduated in 1982 along with …show more content…
During his retirement, Evangelical Christianity became Guerra’s interest and released an album “Para Ti.” Not only that but in 2005 he obtained two Billboard awards for “Best Gospel-Pop” and “Tropical-Merengue.” BMI's (Broadcast Music, Inc), 1995 Guerra's songwriting received 14 BMI Latin Awards. Guerra’s tour set the record for the highest-grossing tour when opening for the Rolling Stones in Puerto Rico in 2006. The hits involved “La Llave de mi corazón” (both song/album), “Que me des tu cariño”, and won 20 awards. For instance, the Latin Grammy Awards with 5 awards, for all the nominated categories: Best Tropical Song, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Album of the Year, and Best Merengue