Growing up in a busy, noisy household has its benefits. For Juanes (whose full name is Juan Esteban Aristizábal Vásquez), being the youngest of six children meant having to listen to his siblings’ eclectic musical tastes. Of the myriad sounds of Colombia—“the land of a thousand rhythms”—one brother liked vallenato and carrilera, while another preferred guasca. They would all play together on acoustic guitars. The result, Juanes reflected in his memoir, was that he became “crazy about every genre”.
In the 1980s the youngster encountered the country’s underground metal and rock scene and a love of heavy guitars and thrashing drums—specifically the work of Metallica, Sepultura and Slayer—took hold. In his teens he co-founded a metal band, Ekhymosis, which enjoyed success in Colombia for a decade. Its songs were political, commenting on the violence wrought by drug cartels and guerrilla fighters in the band’s home city of Medellín. (Juanes’s cousin was kidnapped and murdered; a friend was killed in a massacre of 19 people at a bar in 1990.) “We painted our canvas with brusque strokes,” Juanes wrote. “It was impossible to ignore the patently hostile environment in which we lived.”
Juanes disbanded the group and moved to America. There he found a way to combine the different influences of his youth. His most famous song, “La Camisa Negra”, encapsulates the musician’s distinctive union of sounds–“a Jimi Hendrix-inspired solo over a Colombian cumbia rhythm,” as Daniel Party, a musicologist and academic, describes it. His work moves “fluidly between the local and the global”, says David Fernando García González of the National University of Colombia. The approach has earned him plaudits at home and abroad: since 2000 Juanes has won 26 Latin Grammys and three Grammys. He was unavailable to speak to The Economist as he is in the middle of a world tour to promote “Origen” (“Origin”), his latest album.
As a solo artist, Juanes retained the political sensibility for which Ekhymosis was known—though he has preferred to address discrete issues rather than align himself with a particular ideology. His breakout album, “Fíjate Bien” (“Pay Attention”), took the troubled state of his homeland as its theme. The title track is a passionate call to action about land mines in the country. (Colombia is one of the most densely land-mined countries in the world; mines have caused nearly 12,000 deaths or injuries since 1990.) On “Sueños” (“Dreams”), released in 2004, he lamented the brutality of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a guerrilla group which had taken to kidnapping civilians, often for extortion purposes. “I dream of freedom for all those who are/Imprisoned now in the middle of the jungle,” he sang. “I dream of peace for my bleeding people.”
In 2006 Juanes set up a charity, Fundación Mi Sangre (“Foundation of My Blood”), to help victims of land mines. In 2008, amid escalating tensions between the governments of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador, he organised a series of free outdoor concerts along the Colombian-Venezuelan border with the aim of fostering unity between citizens. A song of 2010, “Quimera” (“Chimera”), made reference to social problems and ecological disasters in Mexico, Venezuela and elsewhere, thereby moving beyond specific concerns for his country.
The musician’s involvement in South American politics has not always been welcome. A second Peace Without Borders concert in 2009 sought to strengthen links between Cuba and the rest of the continent, but some Cuban-Americans felt it was a publicity exercise for the Castro brothers. People in Miami destroyed Juanes’s albums in the street. He has also attracted the ire of officials in Venezuela. In August Diosdado Cabello, a high-ranking politician, called the singer “supremely immoral” and accused him of hypocrisy for planning a concert there given his criticisms of Nicolás Maduro, the president. (Juanes has publicly supported Juan Guaidó, whom some countries have declared to be Venezuela’s rightful leader following a contested election in 2018.) “I don’t want to be at a concert, worried, thinking that something is going to happen to me or to the people,” the singer said, announcing the cancellation of the Venezuelan gig.
Yet Juanes has continued to balance activism and music. In February he was recognised in the International Peace Honours, awards organised by PeaceTech Lab, a non-profit organisation, which celebrate those who have made “philanthropy and humanitarian service a hallmark of their lives”. He remains prolific creatively, too: the singer claims to have written 40 new songs during the pandemic and a new album is expected in the coming months.
In recent years his lyrics have become somewhat less direct. On “Origen” Juanes put a twist on some of the artists who influenced him growing up, ranging from Joe Arroyo to Bruce Springsteen—suggesting that he was happy to make a statement with the words of others. This may reflect his increasing optimism about his own country. In 2016 he tweeted his support of the Colombian government’s peace deal with FARC and the end of the longest-running domestic conflict in the Western hemisphere. He also expressed hope after the election of Gustavo Petro in June. When Ekhymosis started, “we sang about what we didn’t understand, we asked questions, we vented our pain and frustration,” Juanes said; it was “at once a powerful means of expression and a means of escape”. Now, it seems, he is increasingly able to enjoy music for music’s sake. ■

Source: The Economist

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