Aventura Bachata

Bachata music was popular back in the sixties and the seventies, but for the beginning of the new millenium, it was the band Aventura that brought this previously obscure music styling to modern international attention. With a sound that has been variously influenced by R&B, rap and hip-hop, they were the first of several bands to blend these disparate sources into a lively exciting whole that reinvented the genre of bachata.

Founded in 1994 in New York City, the band made its forays into performance in Boston. The large Dominican Republican population of the area they were n gave them deeply Latin American rhythms and added a distinct Cuban sound to their music as well. The band was originally known as the Teenagers, though they eventually changed their name to Grupo Aventura, and eventually came to be known simply as Aventura. In 1999, they were signed on with the major music producer BMG and only three years after that, their album "We Broke the Rules" brought them to international attention

"We Broke the Rules" begins with one of Aventura's most famous songs, "Obsession", which remain a staple of Latin dance venues all around the world. While this is the band's second album, it is the first one that tapped into the music community's consciousness and gave the band the foot hold it would need to vault to stardom. While the album did extremely well in Latin America and the Untied States, it was in Europe where the crowds went really wild. "We Broke the Rules" topped the charts for months in Italy, Spain, Holland and Slovenia and the first song Obsession was number one on the playlists of several countries as well.

The album God's Project was released in April of 2005 and with nearly 500,000 units sold, Aventura proved that they were more than just one trick pony. This band has a real dedication to continual change and experimentation. In the song "Un Chi Chi," Aventura samples an Indian pop song by Asha Bhosle, a Bollywood pop star. In "Your Lying," you can hear Nina Sky and "Un Beso" features a distinct flamenco sound. Other songs on this collection experiment with a reggae beat. While there was some criticism of this album for drifting too far from traditional bachata music, reception on the whole as been overwhelmingly positive.

It can be said that Aventura is continuing an old tradition. Bachata music was first identified as its own unique entity in the 1960s in the Dominican Republic. At first, it was heavily derivative the classical Spanish bolera genre, a type of music known for its tales of pure love and complementary phrasing. Within less than a decade, however, bachata had turned into the music of the Dominican Republic's urban poor and red light districts. Rather than discussing romance and unending devotion, the songs acquired a harder slant and focused on problems faced by the people performing. The bachata lyrics were as likely to be about unfaithful lovers as ones who were true and depicted a landscape that was torn by doubt and despair. When Bachata Rosa caught international attention, the music changed again, reflecting the stylings of many of the cultures that had now listened to it.

In 2002, Aventura burst onto the music scene of New York and rewrote the rules for a genre that had always been known for is evolutions. With its strongly lyrical and hard driving edge, Aventura appealed to a younger generation that was just getting into the bachata. With their new sound for an old genre, Aventura was widely taken up by the younger generation of Latin fans in New York. With this band's bilingual capabilities, they have brought their music to audiences worldwide and it can be seen that they have invigorated a genre of music that seemed to belong to another generation. Aventura's fans are both young and old, speak English and Spanish and above all enjoy the wildly energetic sounds made by this band.

With Aventura, bachata music has shown that it is still sensitive to the lives of the people who listen to it, even if those lives are far away from what they were. Aventura continues to push their boundaries and their music brings an old musical tradition very much into the here and now.