NEW YORK (Top40 Charts/ V-me) - The Dominican superstar,
Juan Luis Guerra appears in a 1-hour in-depth interview on V-me's Estudio Billboard, Tuesday, January 22 + at 10:00pm(ET) with encore on January 27 at 8:00pm.
A master of songcraft known for taking traditional genres like bachata and merengue and making them his own, Guerra has sold over ten million records worldwide and has won numerous awards, including ten Grammy and Latin Grammy Awards, and two Latin Billboard Music Awards. At the 2007 Latin Grammy awards he came away with six Grammy's including the most-coveted trifecta: album of the year, record of the year and song of the year.
In this in-depth interview with host Leila Cobo, Guerra talks about his musical roots and explains that "although I was the son of a basketball player and had basketball courts around me, and I really enjoy playing the sport, I always knew music was my passion and that music was what I wanted to do."
In addition to diverse musical influences from gospel to The Beatles, Guerra studied philosophy in college and incorporated the passion and depth of feelings into his songwriting, "after reading the poetry of Neruda, Borges, Garcia Lorca or Vallejo you get much deeper into your feelings and that helps a lot while you write."
Guerra reflects on an early performance while he was a student at Berklee College of Music in Boston, when he played jazzy blues guitar in the style of Wes Montgomery and nobody paid attention to him. It was when he played the guiro (a traditional percussion instrument) that people took note of his unique musical style. "Back then I wanted to do their music (jazz), until I realized that my success was tied to performing my own music - the Dominican music. I know merengue music can assimilate a lot of different rhythms. I've performed it with jazz, gospel, blues and mambo ... and it always comes out great."
While on Estudio Billboard, Guerra performs some of the international hits that have made him arguably the most famous Dominican artist, Bachata rosa, Ojala que llueva cafe, Las avispas.
Estudio Billboard is a new music and interview series developed by V-me, in collaboration with Billboard Magazine and hosted by Billboard's Leila Cobo, the ultimate Latin music insider. Taped before an intimate live audience, Latin artists reveal new insights into their lives, careers, musical influences and much more. Top Latin artists such as Juanes, David Bisbal, Ricardo Montaner, Mana, Franco de Vita, Daniela Mercury, Jose Feliciano, Gloria Estefan and Daddy Yankee have also appeared on the program. The season airs in the United States through 2007 and 2008. Estudio Billboard is presented in Spanish with subtitles (closed captioning) in English.
Presented locally by public TV stations and carried on basic digital cable in many U.S. cities and nationally on DIRECTV and DIRECTV Mas Ch 440, DISH Network Ch 9414 and DISHLatino Ch 846. To find specific channel information for your market visit https://www.VmeTV.com.
