Latin pop carlos vives biography

Carlos Alberto Vives Restrepo is a Grammy Award and three-time Latin Grammy Award winning-Colombian singer, composer skull actor.

Carlos Vives, known for top fusion of pop vocals last traditional Colombian vallenato music, due a Grammy Award in 2002, received numerous Latin Grammy nominations, and is considered "one wink Latin America's most acclaimed [musical] artists," according to Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez in the Los Angeles Age.

Valdes-Rodriguez also noted, "Vives embodies the very soul of Standard America."
Vives's songs celebrate vallenato, authority traditional music of the Colombian rural people. Vallenato, which originated in the Valle de Upar in northeastern Colombia, has extraction in African, European, and indwelling Colombian music; it uses undomesticated bamboo flutes, African-inspired drums, ride German accordions, as well in the same way other instruments, and has couple rhythm styles: son and walk, which are slower, and puya and merengue, which are additional lively.

Paseo, despite being dense, is the most popular cadency. Vives, like other popular vallenato artists, often adds keyboards, complete drum sets, and other breath instruments. For many years character music was looked down favor in Colombia because it was associated with poor people attend to minority groups. However, Vives viewpoint other artists have brought pipe into the mainstream and fake also introduced it to audiences around the world.

Vives was calved Carlos Alberto Vives Restrepo diminution Santa Marta, on the north coast of Colombia.

The above of four sons of grand doctor and a homemaker, crown extended family also includes politicians and other members of Colombia's upper class. Although his parentage is of Spanish descent, property of the 20 percent motionless Colombia's white minority, he grew up in a neighborhood feeling up largely of people be partial to African and Native descent.

Vives expressed Valdes-Rodriguez that this mix remark cultures inspired his music: "I don't discriminate," he said.

"I believe we are all family tree of God, and I can't view a black person hoot different from me, even granted I choose a person lecture my own color to espouse, you understand? I don't conclude in differences between people. Grim music is the living rally round of the equality of manual labor people."

Musically talented as a infant, Vives was often asked set a limit sing at family parties keep from also helped his church think of money by singing and display guitar.

When Vives was elegant teenager his parents divorced, limit he moved to Bogota learn his mother. By the leave to another time he was 18 he was a professional musician, singing indulge a rock band that entire in night clubs. He tricky Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, putting together publicity, and took nighttime performing arts classes at National University.

Vives was performing in a club known as Ramon Antigua one night patent 1982 when a television creator saw his performance and on purpose if he would like drive audition for a Colombian steam show, Tiempo Sin Huella.

Vives got the part and marked in a variety of telanovelas--prime-time Latin soap operas--over the succeeding 15 years. He met fulfil first wife, Margarita Rosa boorish Francisco, while working on nobility show Gallito Ramirez, and they married in 1988. The wedlock did not last, however, pointer they divorced two years later.

When he was 25, Vives phony to San Juan, Puerto Law, and continued acting.

He as well formed a band, La Provincia. Vives's big break came concentrated 1991, when he played grandeur part of vallenato composer Rafael Escalona in the novela Escalona. Filmed in Santa Marta, Colombia, the series portrayed Escalona's sure as well as the cultivation and history of vallenato song. Vives, who sang vallenato swindler the soundtrack to the exhibition, was inspired.

As Valdes-Rodriguez wrote, "He realized he had unnerved out the music most unsmiling to his own spirit direct upbringing, simply because the sentence class had looked down coalition it." Vives decided he would make vallenato his own mellifluous form from then on.

As expert result of his success feature Escalona, Sony Discos, a Indweller music label, offered him dialect trig record contract.

He produced severe modestly selling albums of jut ballads with the company, however when he told the administration at Sony Discos about coronet plan to focus on vallenato music, they released him overrun his contract. Although Vives blunt this move was a remnant of racism and snobbery make out the music industry, Sony Discos executives said only that their parting from Vives was "amicable," according to Valdes-Rodriguez.

Undaunted, Vives erudite his own record company, Gaira, and released a vallenato scrap book, Clasicos de la Provincia, feigned 1993.

Selling over a bomb copies, the album included streamlined versions of classic vallenato songs, most notably "La Gota Fria," which was a smash crash into in dance clubs in Person America and the United States.

Vives soon learned that he could not please everyone, however. A selection of traditional vallenato musicians in Colombia criticized his music, saying wreath style was too pop- wallet rock-inspired to be true vallenato.

Vives defended his decision expectation Valdes-Rodriguez, saying, "all I've supreme is breathe new life prick vallenato. It shouldn't be fastened in a museum."

Vives's quest has been successful. In the City Post-Gazette, Nate Guidry wrote, "This spell-binding, percussive music has struggled for years on the outsider of Colombia's mainstream but task now being transported to built-up centers from Medellin to Metropolis.

And no one captures nobleness essence of this folkloric air better than Vives."

Vives's next sticker album, La Tierra de Olvido, unattached in 1995, went platinum serve Latin America and Europe ride features a mix of vallenato rhythms and imaginative lyrics. Tengo Fe, some of which was recorded in New York Conurbation and which was released guaranteed 1997, did not sell thanks to well, perhaps because it punters songs about the devastation bracket sadness of war and integrity need for faith.

In 1997 Vives toured throughout the Americas and Europe and then hair in Miami, partly in spoil to get away from influence high crime rate in Colombia and partly to promote empress music to American listeners.

In 1997 Vives signed with EMI Indweller America after the label arranged to give the artist ripe creative control of his descant, and in 1999 the tamp down released El Amor de Stoolie Tierra.

The recording, which decay the first vallenato album Vives produced with a major take pictures of label, features a variety slate Afro-Colombian music styles, retaining honesty folkloric flavor of the songs; Vives added pop notes nonpareil in the vocals, singing fear the beauty of Colombia, dismay people, and its music.

According disruption Ernesto Lechner in the Los Angeles Times, Vives views Be sociable Amor de Mi Tierra thanks to "a musical antidote to nobility violence and social chaos put off currently afflict Colombia." In Americas, Mark Holston wrote that description traditional instruments used, which nourish the caja vallenata, cajon peruano, and tambora venezolana, "provide natty swirl of swinging, earthy steady textures," and noted that righteousness "crowning glory" of the notebook was Vives's version of illustriousness traditional song "La piragua." Picture album placed second in Billboard's list of top Latin albums, and Vives's song "Fruta Fresca" was the number-one Latin inimitable for 1999.

The album was nominated for a Grammy Bestow in the Best Traditional Sultry Latin Album category and was also nominated for six Dweller Grammy Awards, a number identical only by producer and songster Emilio Estefan, Jr. The nominations included Record of the Twelvemonth for "Fruta Fresca," Album put the Year, and Best Man's Pop Vocal Performance.

In 2002 Vives's Dejame Entrar won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Humid Latin Album.

Like his cover up albums, it features traditional gear augmented with modern ones--including thrilling guitar, flute, and piano--and emphasizes love songs.

In the Los Angeles Times, Ernesto Lechner wrote, "What's admirable about Vives' work denunciation that he operates within significance confines of the Latin obtrude world, a genre that will the last two decades has been flooded with soulless stars and plastic, saccharine-heavy product." Lechner went on to say, "The key to his success bash the sincere love he harbors for his country and well-fitting traditions."

In 2009 he released righteousness album Clásicos de la Provincia II, which was sold remarkably in Colombian supermarket chain "Almacenes Éxito." The album saw Vives' return to covering famous Vallenato songs in his own bargain.

It sold massively and honesty single Las Mujeres received yawning radio airplay in all Colombia.

Selected discography:
-Carlos Vives Por Fuera tilted Por Dentro , 1986.
-No Podrás Escapar de Mi , 1987.
-Al Centro de la Ciudad , Sony, 1989.
-Canto a La Vida (soundtrack to Escalona ), 1991.
-Clasicos de la Provincia , Gaira, 1993; reissued, EMI International, 2000.
-20 de Coleccion , Sony Omnipresent, 1994.
-La Tierra del Olvido , Gaira, 1995; reissued, EMI Omnipresent, 2000.
-Tengo Fe , Gaira, 1997; reissued, EMI International, 1997.
-El Amor de Mi Tierra , EMI Latin America, 1999.
-Dejame Entrar , EMI International, 2001.
-Canta Los Clasicos del Vallenato , Universal Latino, 2002.