Searching for Carlos Vives

Carlos Vives is a man of contradictions.

He preaches the equality of all people, yet says he would marry only a white woman. He speaks of the cultural unity of the Americas, yet his lyrics are unapologetically nationalistic. He sings endlessly of his love for Colombia, yet lives in Miami.

He is one of Latin America’s most acclaimed artists--on the same exclusive top tier as Juan Luis Guerra and Ruben Blades--yet began his career as a soap opera star. His flashing eyes and impassioned words show he loves life with a creative urgency few possess, yet he smokes Marlboros nonstop.

But in his contradictions, Vives embodies the very soul of Latin America. His journey from pampered son of an upper-class Colombian family to working-class hero and champion of vallenato folk music is a fascinating lesson in the class, racial and musical politics of Latin America.

Not that Vives set out to be this deep, mind you. Look at him onstage and you see a barefoot, bluejeaned hunk of joy, skipping, arms whirling like a windmill, lost in rapid accordion arpeggios and wooden flute riffs, grinning from somewhere in that wild mass of blondish curls.

Soccer balls and panties fly onstage; he plays with both. Vives is not a philosopher. He is a performer, an actor and a singer, such an unusually good and gleeful one that most critics agree that on Wednesday he should come away from this year’s inaugural Latin Grammys with the best album prize--one of his six nominations--for “El Amor de Mi Tierra.”

Cigarette pinched between graceful, yellowed fingertips, Vives, 38, hovers, sitting now, then standing, then sitting, up and down, drawing his points in the air of the Universal City hotel suite with his hands. He wears khaki shorts, T-shirt and sandals, and he’s thinner in person than he appears in his videos.

“I was born in Santa Marta,” he says, smiling, patient, teaching as he often does in interviews the lesson about himself. There’s a kindness to his honeyed, rasping voice, a warmth to his light brown eyes.

“It’s the northern coast of Colombia,” he continues, “on the Caribbean coast. I grew up with vallenato. The vallenato was born in the countryside, on the plantations, with the workers. Fundamentally, it’s very particular to the local culture.”

It’s like this with Vives. He talks about himself but tells a parallel story of vallenato, the music he plays and sees as analogous to his life.

Vives and the vallenato are the cultural result of mixed Indian, European, African and Middle Eastern influences. In this, they’re both very Colombian. They both suffered a Eurocentric inferiority complex in Vives’ youth but have grown to love themselves in his adulthood.

Vallenato is an upbeat, rhythmically complex music, accordion-based, sort of a mix between zydeco and cumbia. But in Colombia it has long been viewed with disdain by the white ruling classes, because it’s associated with blacks and Indians. In that sense it’s rather like tango, which was scorned in Argentina until it became popular in Paris, and bachata, which was dismissed in the Dominican Republic until Guerra popularized it in the early 1990s.

Vives has been vallenato’s popular savior, mixing it with modern electronic elements and bringing it to the world.

But Vives did not come easily to this position, nor has his place in the music been without controversy, especially among those darker-skinned vallenato prodigies who have complained that Vives is just a pretty white rocker dude who doesn’t even play his own accordion.

*

Vives was the second of four sons born to a doctor and a housewife, into a family of politicians, socialites and doctors. They were and are, he says, proud members of Colombia’s white minority, which makes up 20% of that country.

Yet Vives grew up in a neighborhood surrounded, he says, by “negritos” and “indiecitos”--diminutive, and some would say condescending, terms used to describe blacks and Indians.

“That’s why I play my native music,” he says. “Because in my house my parents were white Spaniards, but my neighbor was negrito, and my other neighbor was indiecito, and I grew up with all of them. And I couldn’t have, thanks to my education or to my life’s circumstances, the place where I was born and all that, I don’t discriminate. I believe we are all children of God, and I can’t view a black person as different from me, even though I choose a person of my own color to marry, you understand? I don’t believe in differences between people. My music is the living proof of the equality of all people.”

At 14, he’d moved with his mother to Bogota after his parents divorced, and by 18 was singing professionally in nightclubs with a rock band. Vives studied advertising and publicity at Jorge Tadeo Losano University during the day. But at night he nurtured his less practical dream of becoming an actor by taking theater classes at Colombia’s National University.

Then, one night while singing at a nightclub called Ramon Antigua, Vives got his first big break, when a group of television producers in the audience asked him to audition for a television series.

He got the part, and in the next 15 years starred in many popular novelas--Latin America’s prime-time “soap operas.” He met his first wife, Margarita Rosa De Francisco, on the set of the novela “Gallito Ramirez.” They later divorced.

Vives relocated to San Juan, Puerto Rico, when he was 25 to continue his acting. There, he met his second wife, Herlinda Gomez, achieved international fame as an actor and won the attention of Sony Discos, a Latin music label based in Miami, which offered him a record deal when he was 27.

Vives recorded two pop ballad albums. He continued to star in novelas--until along came the one that would finally liberate his inner Colombian and change his life, and Latin pop, forever: “Escalona.”

*

“Escalona” was a miniseries based on the life of vallenato composer Rafael Escalona. Vives returned to Santa Marta to film the series.

There, he says, he suddenly understood why he was unhappy as a pop balladeer and novela star in San Juan: It was not who he was. Back home, Vives says, he felt a new connection to the local culture, to the food and accent, to the geography and, most of all, to the music.

Playing the role of Escalona, Vives says, he learned about the richness and history of vallenato, and he realized he had thrown out the music most basic to his own spirit and upbringing, simply because the ruling class had looked down on it.

“It’s marvelous music,” Vives says, “and I wanted to make all Colombians and Latin Americans feel proud of their native cultures.”

Vives sang on the “Escalona” soundtrack, which became the top-selling album in Colombian history. Then he decided he wanted to sing nothing but vallenato from that point on.

“A lot of people said, ‘Don’t record that music, that music is only popular there, it’ll never sell,’ ” he says. “And I said, ‘I don’t care. I want to do it. I want to do it.’ ”

When Vives told Sony Discos of his awakening, they fired him immediately. Vives says the reaction of the record company demonstrates racism and classism in the Latin music industry.

A representative for the label would only say that their parting was “amicable.”

Vives formed his own small company, Gaira Productions, named for Santa Marta’s original Indian inhabitants.

He recorded his first vallenato album, “Clasicos de la Provincia,” on his own, and released it in 1993. It featured updated versions of many classic vallenato hits, including “La Gota Fria,” which became a smash club hit in much of Latin America and the U.S. The album sold more than 1 million copies.

Though the album sold well in Colombia--about 600,000 copies there--Vives was not embraced by the vallenato establishment, some of whose members saw him as an interloper.

“They said I was too ‘rock’ to play vallenato,” he says, “but all I’ve done is breathe new life into vallenato. It shouldn’t be stuck in a museum.”

Over the years, Vives has gained the respect and admiration of most vallenato purists, thanks to a strong band featuring accordionist Egidio Cuadrado and gaita flute player Mayte Montero, both widely respected musicians in the genre.

Ironically, the Latin labels soon came knocking on Vives’ door--including, he says, the one that had fired him. But none would agree to his terms: that he have complete control over his material.

Vives recorded two more albums on his own. The first, “La Tierra del Olvido,” sold well. But the second, a moody album about the ravages of war titled “Tengo Fe,” bombed.

“It was an album that talked about war, that talked about having faith,” he explains with a laugh and shrug. “So, of course, nobody liked it and nobody cared.”

After “Tengo Fe,” Vives moved to Miami, in part because war and crime in Colombia were simply overwhelming him, but also, he says, because he was traveling there all the time to promote his music. He has kept Gaira’s offices in Colombia and supports 20 families, he says.

“Miami, for me, has always been very important, for many years,” says Vives. “The Latin colony in Miami, the Cubans, have been great with me. They’ve opened doors for me.”

In 1997, EMI Latin America came calling. To Vives’ surprise the label accepted his stipulations. His last album, “El Amor de Mi Tierra,” is the first vallenato album Vives has recorded for a major label. On it, he is teamed with executive producer Emilio Estefan.

The album has been a commercial and artistic success, and it has taken Vives closer to his life’s mission: to make Colombians proud of their own culture and music, and to introduce vallenato to the world.