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 Entertainment | August 2006 
Miami is a Muse for Mexican Rockers
 Jordan Levin - miami.com
| | From left, drummer Alex González, singer Fher Olvera, guitarist Sergio Vallín and bassist Juan Calleros. |
After two years of touring and a year off, Mexican pop-rock group Maná was looking to get recharged and reinspired. And so, like millions of tourists before them, they came to Miami.
The chance to work in the historic Criteria recording studios in North Miami was definitely a plus, but it was the view of the beach from their Sunny Isles hotel, where they often recorded the vocals, that really got them going.
"We saw manta rays, manatees, we bought binoculars to watch beautiful girls," says Fher Olvera, Maná's leonine lead singer. "It was gorgeous - the nights with a full moon. We could record at dawn or whenever we wanted. It was super relaxing."
The mood is apparent in the love songs on the much anticipated Amar es Combatir (To Love is To Fight), released Tuesday, the first new studio album from the immensely popular Maná in more than four years. There's even a tropical cha cha cha, El Rey Tiburon (The Shark King), which plays on Olvera's heartthrob image with lines like "Careful mermaids/he's here/and he's breaking loose . . . the King Shark, who'll eat you up with love."
"Sergio wrote that song," says Olvera, the only band member who still doesn't have a family, grinning at guitarist Sergio Vallín at Coconut Grove's Mayfair Hotel in July.
"But it's his autobiography," Vallín shoots back.
"Not true, he's lying," Olvera replies, his grin spreading.
The band kicks off its promotion here, with an in-store appearance today at FYE in the Dolphin Mall in West Miami-Dade, and a private concert tonight for winners of a Univisíon Radio contest.
After 20 years, Maná still finds inspiration in each other.
"Above all, Maná is an honest band," says Vallín. "We do what we like. We're true to our ideals, to what we feel. What inspires us - we just have to go out on the street and listen to what's happening to people, gathering ideas and transforming them into songs."
"We love to play together, we love being together, we love to tour, we love to be revolutionaries," says Alex González, the Miami-born, Cuban-Colombian-American drummer whose energy powers Mana's music and performances. "There's a chemistry and a very special magic, and that's why the four of us sound the way we do."
The Maná sound, a blend of melodic pop, infectious reggae, fierce rock guitars and themes that range from love to environmental degradation and social injustice, has made them one of the most popular groups in Latin music.
They have sold 19 million albums worldwide, earned numerous Grammy and Latin Grammys, and have been filling major U.S. venues since the mid-1990s, when neither they nor any other Latin rock act could get on commercial radio. They hit mainstream U.S. awareness in 1998 when they recorded Corazón Espinado for Santana's hit comeback album, Supernatural (Santana returned the favor by playing on 2003's Revolución de Amor).
The only guest on Combatir is Dominican songwriter Juan Luis Guerra, on Bendita Tu Luz (Blessed Be Your Light), a lovely bachata ballad written by Olvera and Vallín that seems a tribute to both human and spiritual love - a favorite topic for Guerra, an ardent Christian. But Olvera says it was inspired by something more universal.
"I am not Christian," he said. "However Juan Luis is. But there's a meeting with what I believe, which is in things like the sun, the moon, mother earth. Juan Luis believes more in another kind of spirituality."
"At the end there's always a place where all these spiritual beliefs unite. But at the same time it's simply a love song."
Absent from Combatir are the social and environmental themes that have made Maná more than just another pop band. Since 1995 they have supported the Selva Negra Foundation, named for their song about environmentalist Chico Mendez, which promotes environmental awareness, helps communities hurt by pollution, and works with a variety of other environmental and human rights issues.
The only socially oriented song on the new CD is the guitar-driven Combatiente (Combatant), which rages against conformity more than any specific injustice.
None of this was planned, says Olvera. "You never think, 'Oh, I'm going to do more social themes than other material,' " he says. "These songs came out like this in a natural way, it was spontaneous."
But he says this doesn't mean Maná has abandoned their ideals, or belief that their music can make a difference.
"Alone, no, I don't think so," he says. "But it's precisely because Mana is not alone. Mana has millions of allies in 40 countries, and they take us seriously, and they're also working to change their countries. We're just a grain of sand, part of the machinery of the world. Maybe our songs don't change much. But our faith in changing things is unbreakable."
jlevin@MiamiHerald.com |
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