Singer’s Message of Love, In a Form for All to See
The Colombian songwriter Juanes, a superstar across Latin America, could easily have released his new album, “Mis Planes Son Amarte” (“My Plans Are to Love You”), on its own terms: as a set of a dozen gleaming, tuneful songs about love, featuring his amiable voice and his strategically syncopated guitars. Instead, he added a layer of ambition.
“Mis Planes Son Amarte” is a “visual album,” the digital heir to the movie musical and Broadway’s jukebox musicals. It’s the first visual album for a major Latin performer, with its songs strung together in a narrative about love, time, space, magic and links between the indigenous and the extraterrestrial.
“Everything has changed so much and everybody is consuming just songs, so the culture of the album is becoming a concept of the past,” Juanes said by telephone from Medellín, Colombia, where he was born. “For me, it was important to put a face to every song and just tell a story.”
Juanes (shortened from his full name, Juan Esteban Aristizábal Vásquez) has deftly merged Latin and Caribbean rhythms with rock instruments. His songs have regularly zoomed to Number 1 on Spanish-language radio stations inside and outside the United States. He has been showered with 21 Latin Grammy Awards since 2000.
“Mis Planes Son Amarte” comes across as Juanes’s most lighthearted album. At the beginning of “Actitud” (“Attitude”), he sings, “The news says that everything is bad/ But I prefer to be more optimistic/ In my hands I carry only a guitar and a good attitude.” His children join him to sing about the healing power of love.
His new songs concentrate on love: finding it, losing it, letting it go, carrying it to the world.
“The world is crazy, if you look at who is running the world now,” Juanes said. “When you see what is happening, it’s a very tough moment. But I really want to concentrate on the positive side. To me, music is a cure of my soul. I want people to listen to this music and to this album and just to feel better.”
On the visual album, Juanes plays an archaeologist turned astronaut and cosmonaut, traversing decades and taking a shaman’s
A digital show by Juanes that’s like a Broadway musical.
ayahuasca potion to find his way back to the indigenous soul mate who haunts his dreams. Timelines get tangled, but romance prevails.
Juanes, 44, worked with Colombian musicians from Medellín: the hip-hop and reggaetón producers Mosty, Sky and Bull Nene. He collaborated with them on production and songwriting — a shift for Juanes, who has written songs alone for the past decade.
“They understood who I was, where I was coming from,” he said. “They were not pretending to take me to another place, I was not pretending to go to their place. We were just trying to find a place between us to do the right thing for my music. We were trying to combine the organic side and the electronic side.”
The sound of the album is both welcoming and futuristic. But at its core are sounds that Juanes grew up on: cumbia, salsa, vallenato and rural music called guasca, “the music that my parents listened to when I was a kid,” he said. “It’s important to know that I am close to my roots and I am using that to build something new.”