Guerra: The Hot Tropical Mixmaster

Not since Willie Colon and Ruben Blades revolutionized salsa with their socially conscious lyrics and daring arrangements in the ‘70s has tropical music produced a figure with the impact of Juan Luis Guerra.

Just as Colon and Blades became the point of reference for a whole generation of salseros , the Dominican singer-composer dictates the creative pace of the music today.

Guerra, who headlines the Greek Theatre on July 11, goes beyond salsa, enriching his music with the Dominican merengue rhythm (a somewhat faster but milder rhythm than salsa) and the bachata sound, a type of Caribbean bolero virtually unknown outside the Dominican Republic until Guerra got in the picture.

Salsa is present on his albums, but Guerra’s trademark is his original blend of merengue , bachata , plenty of R&B;, jazz and rock trimmings, and even a touch of African music, all packaged with a social commentary that owes much to his Panamanian predecessor, Blades.

“Thanks to Blades, we learned that music could be an instrument for unity and awareness,” says Guerra. “The issue here, though, is not what the United States can do for us, but what we can do for ourselves. If the U.S. or anybody is going to give us any help, it has to go toward education. Music has united us on one level, but still there’s a lot to do.”

Guerra, 35, grew up in Santo Domingo, where he was drawn to his country’s music--as well as that of the Beatles (“my strongest influence”) and the classic rock of the ‘70s.

After studying music and philosophy in Santo Domingo, Guerra earned a scholarship at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. It was at a party in Boston that he experienced a sort of musical enlightenment.

After playing some standard jazz and rock on a guitar, without much effect on the guests, Guerra saw a Caribbean percussion instrument called a guiro, and when he began playing it, the party-goers surrounded him, fascinated by the exotic sound.

“Right on the spot I said to myself, ‘If such a simple thing as playing guiro is so fascinating to them, then I’ll stick to my guiro .’ It was an immediate realization, to use the knowledge acquired at Berklee but work on my own music. And that’s exactly what I did.”

Back home, Guerra recorded three albums as a member of the vocal quartet 4.40. The records--”a sort of Caribbean Manhattan Transfer,” he says--were well received by critics and fellow musicians, but the next one, “Ojala que llueva cafe,” (“Let It Rain Coffee”), became a huge popular success. The album, the first with the Juan Luis Guerra & 4.40 billing, includes “La Gallera,” a blend of merengue and gospel that is one of the most original Latin pop songs ever made.

“Ojala” was followed by “Bachata Rosa,” an even more popular album that consolidated Guerra as the premier composer and interpreter in Latin music. Guerra’s first flirtation with bachata , the record sold 5 million copies worldwide, led to sold-out concerts in the United States, Latin America and Europe, and earned him a Grammy for best tropical album in 1991.

The record popularized bachata and gave birth to countless imitators, all trying to duplicate the unique vocal harmonies of 4.40’s Adalgisa Pantaleon, Roger Zayas and Marco Hernandez. It earned Guerra the respect and admiration of critics and fellow musicians in all areas of Latin pop music. “Though his records are definitely folkloric-rooted, the Beatles’ presence is evident especially in the way he plays with chords and harmonies,” notes record producer Gustavo Santaolalla, best known for his work with the Mexican rock groups Maldita Vecindad and Cafe Tacuba. “But he’s an original. To fuse tropical music with Beatlesque structures is a real art.”

The “Bachata” concert tour put Guerra face to face with the worsening economic situation in Latin America, motivating him to keep writing social material. Guerra’s lyric approach shares views with the left, but his social criticism is sarcastically humorous and has no partisan militancy, making it more acceptable to Latino conservatives.

“El Costo de la Vida” (“The Cost of Living”), one of the songs that were born around that time, is a typically wry comment on the consequences of the global economic situation on Latin America. Sample line: “Nobody cares because we don’t speak English, not Mitsubishi, not Chevrolet.”

At the Lo Nuestro Awards held in Miami in May, it was named song of the year--to the jeers of a few Cuban exiles in the audience who accused Guerra of being a communist.

“That was one of the most difficult moments in my career,” Guerra remembers. “But that’s part of democracy and I’m a democrat. Nevertheless, there were about 3,000 Cubans there, and only two or three yelled at me. Not all Cubans are like that.”

Guerra’s current album, “Areito,” which came out in December, is less spectacular than “Bachata Rosa,” but no less ambitious. Imagining the plight of the Dominican and Puerto Rican Tahino Indians as they faced extermination by the Spaniards 500 years ago, “Areito” is Guerra’s statement on oppression and suffering. The title is a Tahino word for party or group worship , and he opens the album with Tahino choirs and indigenous drums. He even called in Ruben Blades to sing on one of the songs.

Due to an eye affliction, Guerra hasn’t toured internationally since last July. He had surgery in Florida late last year, and on Monday he returned to the stage for the first time in a year, before a sold-out crowd in Santo Domingo.

Despite his absence, “Areito” has already sold more than a million copies worldwide, and next week he begins a four-month tour that will take him to the United States, Puerto Rico, South America, Mexico and Spain. He travels with 18 musicians, 10 engineers, smoke machines and video screens. Few performers in Latin music have a higher profile. “You know something?” he says. “I assume all responsibility for being famous, but I don’t like that word. I prefer popular . And please don’t call me a poet, out of respect to the great Latin American writers. The Dominican author Enriquillo Sanchez called me ‘the first danceable poet ever born.’ That sounds much better.”