Juanes turns 50: zero nostalgia, with a biography and an album on the way

This Tuesday, August 9, Juanes celebrates 50 years of life without nostalgia, with the launch of a biography full of successes and failures for which he is grateful it has been an “impressive” musical career and also with the news of a new album that is “on another level of composition and performance”, according to his account.

already the singer has more than 1,500 million seconds of lifefigure with whom he plays to name his new biography, written by the Colombian journalist Diego Londoño.

“These numbers are basically the seconds that passed from August 9, 1972 to August 9, 2022,” Juanes points out and laughs denies that it is to hide his age because says he is “happy” with his 50 years.

“It’s art,” he stresses, emphasizing that it is a way to enjoy this moment of his career when he feels fulfilled.

“I am very grateful, me I wake up in the morning every day and I have a lot of gratitude, because really what has happened in my musical career and in my life has been impressive “, he points out.

He also remembers difficult times, but makes it clear that “If I hadn’t walked through that dark place, I wouldn’t be with that fullness right now.“.

A story linked to Latin America

“To talk about Juanes is to tell part of the history of music in Latin America and in the world”, explains the Dominican Juan Luis Guerra in the prologue of the book edited by Aguilar, the imprint of the Penguin Random House, and praises his ability “to mix your roots with rock and other musical genres in an impressive way “.

For the Colombian, those of Guerra are words that fill him with “emotion” for having come from what he considers the “Fifth Beatle”, an “eminence as a person and as a musician”.

Juanes explains that himmixes in his career which took place “unconsciously” for a childhood when his parents and siblings played the guitar and listened to the popular music of Carlos Gardel, Los Panchos, Pedro Infante and José Alfredo Jimenez and from an adolescence marked by rock.

“At 13, I discovered rock, the electric guitar, in short I am crazy for rockI think it was like an epiphany, “he adds.

“Juanes is in the place he always wanted to be, with the tranquility and love of his family in his right pocket and with music and his guitar in his left,” the book reads.

Superstitious, disciplined, cautiously silent, evasive with petulance and convinced that he can listen to Slayer and Los Visconti “and no problem” is the profile offered by Juanes’s 230-page biography.

titled 1,576,800,000 secondsthe biography also takes a look at Jan immigrant to the United States, arrived with a few dollars, no Englishwithout a car and with the uncertainty of what he was doing in a country that was not his own.

“Very difficult, if I look at it now I appreciate it somehow, because I remember it as a lesson“, he indicates.” The anxiety of knowing whether or not, in short, it was a very complex period, but in the end it taught me too much, “he adds.

Juanes assures that he reaches the age of 50 without nostalgia, but with happiness and maturity and autonomy in music because he feels that now he can do it “freely” as in his early days. “I can play with it by doing what I want”dig.

“Before, I felt sorry, distressed, I was very shy, I wasn’t prepared, so to speak,” he says.

Now he feels safer and a champion, he says, is the new album he is preparing, which is “on another level” because even with the time left by the pandemic he knew how to study musical harmony, composition, guitar, song and poetry.

“And most of all I had time to sit calmly in the studio and compose again as I did in the past,” he adds.

Elegant rock for the new album

Juanes says the new album, with 13 songs, has his personal seal printed but “updated” and also “the whole album is played by musicians, human beings, my friends, my band, The thing was very artisanal and very passionate“.

“It’s more curated,” says Juanes, who plans to release “at least” one of the songs this year as a preview of the album. mostly owned by him and one of them also in collaboration with Juan Luis Guerra.

Rock, but more “traditional”, is present on the new album, “but in a very elegant way, I don’t feel squeaky or anything like that, but Sorry mixed with the Caribbean, with elements of Colombian music“, details.

“I like that side like a beach, like a happy party, not that dark, but the lyrics are deep,” says Juanes, who lives in Miami (USA).

Currently, the singer-songwriter is on tour in Latin America and will perform at the end of August in Peru and also he designs concerts in Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Colombia.

The biography, Juanes says, was a three-year project based on interviews with his closest entourage, including several “little angels” who saved him from his tough beginnings in Los Angeles.

For Juanes it is “very crazy” to read it, because it gave him another “perspective” of a musical career that has spanned more than two decades.

“It’s like having found others different plots told by other people“, tells.

It made him think again about how “transcendental” and “sacred” mean a second in life and that’s why he doesn’t waste it.

“There are too many things to doI think there are a lot of blank pages, I have too many projects and I want to do many, many more things absolutely, “he says.

Source: EFE / Ivonne Malaver

wd