-- "A Dios Le Pido" ("I Ask God")
Growing up in Medellin is to know violence. For Juanes, growing up in Medellin also meant knowing music. He took up the guitar at age 7, following the lead of his father (who died of cancer when Juanes was 25) and brothers. Together, they'd jam at home, playing boleros, vallenato, guasca, tangos. But his musical tastes changed in his teens. By 14, he'd discovered heavy metal, in particular Metallica, and with it, the thrill of raging against the system.
Recalls Juanes: "I rebelled against everything, my heritage, my family, so I could be a radical of rock." He formed a metal band and christened it with an appropriate heavy metal name, Ekhymosis, or bruise. But after 11 years of playing around Colombia and recording seven albums, he disbanded the group. He wanted to find his own sound, one that expressed the heritage he'd earlier rejected.
"Music is a way of releasing whatever bothers you," says Juanes, now touring the U.S. "And even though I'm singing about . . . difficult things, there's always an optimism."
(Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post)
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"I spent so much time trying to sound like American bands," he says, "and for what?"
He moved to Los Angeles to be in the center of the rock universe, but he was broker than broke, and spoke next to no English. He spent his days in Borders, sipping coffee and teaching himself English by studying the dictionary. He couldn't afford to buy one, so he'd mark his place with a little piece of paper for when he returned. When he wasn't haunting the bookstore he was passing around his demo tape. Hoping.
"It was a very hard time, a very dark time," he recalls, "but it strengthened me."
"Fijate Bien" was born of this experience, a sweetly despairing album. Through it, he was able to focus his melancholy, thanks to the collaboration of Argentine producer Gustavo Santaolalla, a fixture on the Latin alternative rock scene. It is a partnership that endures to this day. Around that time he met Fernan Martinez, a fellow Colombian who'd managed the father-and-son Spanish superstars Julio and Enrique Iglesias.
"He was the complete opposite of Enrique Iglesias," Martinez says with a laugh. "He was very humble.
"He was different in all the senses. And I thought, how are we going to get Latin radio to play this in the United States?"
Juanes wasn't an instant hit. "Fijate Bien" didn't sell that well -- only 72,000 records -- but the 2001 Latin Grammys changed all that.
"Seven nominations!" Martinez crows. "I was shooting for three or four. Getting those awards was our biggest weapon. We used that as a key to get into the gate. And that's when his career blew up."
According to Nielsen Soundscan, Juanes has sold nearly a million records in the United States. (There is no independent system for tracking international sales.) "Un Dia Normal" became the top Spanish-language album of 2003 in the United States and stayed in the Top 10 longer than any other Latin album, earning Juanes six Latin Grammys over two years: album of the year, record of the year, song of the year, best rock solo album and best rock song two years in a row. "Mi Sangre," which Juanes describes as his most passionate work, was released last fall and was one of Billboard's Top 10 selling Latin albums of 2004.
Juanes is unusual in Latin music, Tillan says, because, like Bono, who meets with world leaders and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, he's able to merge social commentary with a rock-star appeal: He's got the sensitive rocker-boy persona. He's got the voice, a rich, sure baritone, the product of daily two-hour practice sessions. He's got the fingers, thanks to years of playing the guitar. (He's the only Latin artist sponsored by Fender.) And he's got the looks: tats decorating lean muscles; intense green eyes peeking out from a shock of dark hair. In the Latin music world, Tillan says, "we have somehow distilled talent into something that has mass appeal but no content. There's very few artists who are able to connect with the masses and really have content."
Much of that content focuses on peace -- a peace that has been hard to come by for decades, where leftist guerrillas, bolstered with an infusion of cash from drug cartels, battle the government. In the United States, it's unusual to see someone who embodies the rock rebel persona coming out on the side of the president. But in Colombia, politics are a little more nuanced, a lot more complex. Juanes, says Martinez, is friendly with President Alvaro Uribe: They attended the same high school in Medellin. Onstage, he's dedicated songs to soldiers and police officers, and in 2003 performed in a concert to raise money for Colombia's wounded veterans, many of whom return home missing arms and legs.
"He's apolitical," says Billboard's Cobo, a native of Colombia herself. "I don't think he's right-wing or left-wing or any wing, but I think he's pro-peace. . . . For all of us who are from there, we are distressed that things are not right yet."
The years have mellowed the rage, and though Juanes says "the music of rock" will always influence his sound, his music has evolved to a more pop-friendly format. Still, he hasn't quite embraced the glitz of pop life.
For a 2001 news conference announcing his first set of Latin Grammy nominations, Martinez says, Juanes showed up in smelly sneakers -- and nothing to change into. With no time to spare, Martinez tossed Juanes's sneakers into the wash and then sent him out, feet squishing in the sopping shoes.
"The nicest thing about him," Martinez says, "is that he's a genius and he doesn't know it. He thinks what he does is easy and anyone can do it."
