Around 20 years ago, I went to Guatemala to explore possible mission work there. While I was there, I was in a café when I heard a song playing that I really liked. I asked the waiter who was playing, and he answered me with what sounded like “Harvey Palo.” When I got home, I went to some record stores (we still had those back then), but I never could find Harvey Palo. A few years later, the internet was just starting to get fast enough to be useful, so I fired up my telephone modem with all the screechy connecting sounds, and got on my Netscape browser to look for Spanish language rock groups. It turned out the group I was looking for was called Jarabe de Palo. I bought a bunch of their music, which I still really enjoy.
The internet also let me search for “music like Jarabe de Palo,” and I was able to listen to a lot of artists that I had never heard before. One of these was a singer/songwriter named Juan Luis Guerra. I quickly found out that I was late to the party. Guerra has sold 30 million records, and has won 21 Latin Grammy Awards. He quickly became my favorite music artist.
Most of his songs are in Spanish, so it is a challenge for me to pick up some of his lyrics, but he studied at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, and writes a few songs in English, like Something Good. Other songs are easy to pick up, like Gracias (Thank you) which uses few words, and sounds like a prayer to me. The melodies of some of his songs are so beautiful that I don’t need to understand the lyrics to enjoy them, like Bachata en Fukyoka or Ojala Que Llueva Café. I’ve used Google to get translations for some of his other songs, and many of them read like poetry.
Juan Luis Guerra is from a generation of generous musicians. He has frequently collaborated with other Latin musicians, and some of his You Tube videos include duets with other artists. He has one album which is an explicitly Christian album, titled Para Ti. Check out some of the links above, or just search for him on your favorite music service.
