A Celebrity

A Celebrity: Juan Luis Guerra

The majority of people have a celebrity who they admire. The people admire a celebrity for some reasons such as his physical characteristics, achievements, successes, and his mindset or way of being.  A person maybe admires a celebrity based on their own experience, knowledge and feelings. In my case, I admire a singer. This singer is Juan Luis Guerra.

Juan Luis Guerra is a Latin-American songwriter, composer, musician and producer. He was born in Dominican Republic in 1957. His musical career begins in 1983, since this year, Guerra has been composing different genres like ‘‘Merengue’’, tropical, romantic ballads and ‘‘Bachata’’. In his different songs he brings messages of love, faith and social- political-historical criticism. Also, J. L. Guerra has won many awards and has sold over 30 million records. For these reasons, he is one of the most renowned singers of all America.

The Dominican singer is also known for being the first artist of tropical music to achieve the goal of making critics in his music to the political and social life of America. This achievement was thanks to some of his songs. For example, in one of his first songs ‘‘Ojalá que llueva café’’ (1989) did a description and therefore a critical observation to the poverty of the Dominican society of that moment, this brought him international recognition. Another song were he did a political and social critic was ‘‘El costo de la vida’’ (1992) whose video has a message against capitalism. The songs ‘‘Visa para un sueño’’ (1989) and ‘‘El Niagara en bicicleta’’ (1998) also bring a social criticism were he describes how people are affected by a corrupt government. Recently, with the song ‘‘La guagua’’ (2010), he continues making these critics in this case, used an analogy comparing a bus and its passengers with the government and its population. Throughout these and others compositions Guerra protests against bad conditions in the majority of Latin American countries.

          For these reasons Juan Luis Guerra is one celebrity that I admire. His capacity to communicate his thinking related to a problem that not everyone treats makes me admire him. Also, the composition of other themes like love and faith in Christian religion make him be one of the best songwriters of his genres. His great career and the publication of many records lead him to stardom. Since 1983 until now, this character has made a huge range of musical themes and I am sure that he will continue with this tendency.