Juan Luis Guerra

In his native Dominican Republic, merengue superstar Juan Luis Guerra is considered a poet and musician of the people. He and his band 440 are much loved throughout the Latino world, and become partially responsible for revitalizing the tropical music that had been languishing during the late '80s from overplay and lack of innovation. Their debut made little impact, but for their next effort, Guerra and 440 began adding merengue and lightning-quick riffs of "perico ripiao," and suddenly found success with a young crowd tired of hearing the same old thing. The new music, called "bachata-merengue," soon won considerable acclaim in the Dominican Republic.