In a tiny garage, Julio Nava is belting out the lyrics to his newest songs that could propel him to superstardom.
Tall, muscular and heavily tattooed, Nava looks every bit the rock star. And his first two albums have won him a large following in his native Colombia. But the recent international success of Colombian pop artists has Nava dreaming of packing arenas from Chicago to Madrid.
“A big door has been opened by them,” said Nava, a 28-year-old from the southern city of Cali. “I’m going to take advantage of it.”
As fans across the continent await the MTV Video Music Awards Latin America on Oct. 24 and about two weeks later the 6th annual Latin Grammy Awards, a share of the honors likely will go to musicians from this Andean nation that has garnered more headlines for its murderous drug trade and civil war than its groundbreaking artists.
That negative image is beginning to change.
Leading the charge of Colombian musicians is Juan Esteban Aristizabal, better known as Juanes, a lyrical and pensive rocker from Medellin who already has won nine Latin Grammys and is nominated for three awards this year.
Mixing guitar-based rock with folk sounds, the 32-year-old singer has sold more than 3 million albums worldwide and won critical acclaim for tackling themes ranging from unrequited love to the pain over his nation’s brutal conflict.
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Other Colombians snatching 2005 Grammy nominations are modern vallenato star Carlos Vives, alternative rock diva Andrea Echeverri and Ilona, a 24-year-old singer whose soulful first album earned her a nomination in the best new artist category.
Raised in a slum in the nation’s capital, Bogota, by her divorced father who shined shoes for a living, Ilona began her musical career as a teenager playing on public buses rumbling through the city.
She sang a cappella for several months before buying a cheap guitar and teaching herself the basics.
“I learned by watching others play because I was very timid and didn’t ask questions,” she recalled. “But I listened and watched and memorized the movements.”
Some music executives say Ilona could follow in the footsteps of Shakira, the sultry 28-year-old Colombian star who has redefined the term crossover success by attracting Latino and non-Latino fans. Shakira’s latest compact disc, “Oral Fixation Vol. 1,” has sold more copies in the U.S. than any previous Spanish-language record.
The search for new talent
Music executives and others say record companies are intensifying their search in Colombia and other Latin American countries for new talent as U.S. sales of Latin artists soar.
And while the region has long produced talented pop musicians and groups–among them Argentina’s Charly Garcia, Chile’s La Ley and Mexico’s Mana–few countries in recent years can match the success of Colombian artists.
“The music they are making is wonderful,” said Leila Cobo, a Colombian who is Billboard’s Latin bureau chief in Miami. “There is so much talent there.”
Music executives say Colombia’s ethnic and geographical diversity has generated an array of traditional sounds ranging from the accordion-driven rhythms of vallenato to the folkloric coastal dance sound of cumbia.
But the pop music scene in Colombia was long dominated by local groups imitating U.S. and British bands. Juanes began his career as an American-style heavy metal rocker. Juan Fernando Fonseca, a rising star whose latest songs are topping Colombia’s music charts, also looked north for inspiration.
“I had my first band when I was 12 years old and I only sang music in English,” said Fonseca, 26.
But the influence of foreign artists fell dramatically a decade ago after Vives revolutionized Colombian music by taking vallenato and rocking it with an electric guitar, an electric bass, keyboards and a drum set.
Fonseca recalled his excitement upon discovering Vives’ 1994 album, “Clasicos de la Provincia,” describing the experience as though it were the Colombian equivalent of the moment Bob Dylan stunned fans by adding an electric guitar to his folk songs at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
“It blew my mind,” Fonseca said. “This was the first time that I heard this music [vallenato] and realized that it was not my parents’ music, but it was closer to me.”
Experts say Colombian artists also distinguish themselves by writing lyrics that transcend borders.
Gabriel Abaroa, president of the Latin Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in Miami, sponsor of the Latin Grammys, said Colombia’s tragic mix of war and narco-trafficking has stirred artists’ creativity much the way dictatorships in Spain and Argentina produced a wave of musicians from those countries decades ago.
No Colombian artist exemplifies this trend more than Juanes, who has written songs about kidnapping, land mines, assassination and, in the hit single “I ask God,” peace.
Looking for big break
Not surprisingly, the success of Colombia’s big three–Vives, Shakira and Juanes–has spurred intense competition among artists.
Thousands of musicians in Bogota get their start playing in bars, plazas, outdoor markets and, as in Ilona’s case, on buses. Two of the best are Alex Gutierrez and Diego Parra, who each day scramble from one bus to the next, serenading passengers with guitars and harmonicas.
It’s not easy. Often, bus drivers don’t want musicians on board and slam on the brakes to disrupt them, or they blast the radio.
But during a recent day, a dozen bus passengers applauded and handed over change as the two musicians played a short set that opened with Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.”
“I hope that in a minimum of three years we will go to the Grammys,” said Parra, 30, who knew Ilona during her bus-playing days. “Anything is possible.”
The odds are stacked against the duo, not only because of the ferocious competition, but because it’s expensive for a record company to launch a Latin artist. Pirating of CDs throughout the continent has decimated sales. Still if a company discovers another Shakira or Juanes who is popular in the U.S. and Europe, it can be a gold mine.
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One company scouring Colombia for talent is EMI Music Colombia S.A., which receives about 100 demo tapes a month from would-be stars.
Juan Pablo Mier, EMI’s marketing director for the Andean region, said that a decade ago the company had no Colombian musicians on its roster. Today, EMI represents about 10 local acts, including Ilona.
“We’ve really started to bet on Colombian artists,” Mier said.
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