At heart, Dominican superstar Juan Lu s Guerra, the bachata, is a Beatles fan. Sitting in the sleek offices of EMI Records in Manhattan, he fiddles with a pile of compilations by the Fab Four. "If I'm going to mix jazz with merengue or rock with merengue, I always try to make it so that our traditional rhythm prevails," said Guerra, sporting a red and black windbreaker and black cap.
"This is what happens with the choruses; I find them very Beatles, you know? I always say The Beatles were the There Was You,' and it's a bachata, I tell you." Guerra has just released a new album, "La Llave de Mi Coraz n (The Key to My Heart)" on EMI, which is a comeback of sorts.
Outside of 2004's "Para Ti," a collection of Christian-themed songs and a greatest-hits compilation, he Igual." With Guerra's typical renaissance man mastery of production techniques, arrangements and brilliant songwriting, "La Llave" is at least the equal of his previous work, and may go down as one of his best albums. The album's namesake single appears twice, in English and Spanish versions.
The disc's new territory for Guerra, who is trying to expand his already huge worldwide audience. "I wanted to come out with something innovative," Guerra said. "'La Llave' has a blues structure.
To that I added mambo, and I added merengue to that mambo, and later a kind of hip-hop narrative, and all of that I orchestrated with something like a '50s or '60s big band." While he's writing songs for an album, Guerra likes to visit Manhattan to decompress, see classical music performed and go to the Museum of Modern Art. And while putting together "La Llave," he had a series of epiphanies.
"On the to me suddenly; I heard the voice of a girl ...
telling me things," Guerra said. "And 'Cancioncita de Amor ,' the way we did the salsa with the rock influences in the middle. I had so many moments when I said, 'Caramba!
'" Although he hasn't put out many albums lately, Guerra has famously last year opened for the Rolling Stones at their first show in Puerto Rico. He performer. "I was very clear from the start; I said I'm going to do this Christian record now, but that doesn't mean that from now on I'm going to just make 'Christian' music," Guerra said.
"Because when one sings about love, one is also singing about love that God has placed in one's heart. I'm a singer that sings about love, in all of the senses of the word." CRUCIAL SONIDOS.
Jos Alberto "El Canario" and his Orchestra play LQ (212-593-7575) Wednesday. ..
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