4th September, 2010
We haven't heard from Juanes in two years, and given the blandified, soothingly jangly direction that so many rock-inflected male singers have had success with since his last rock romántica #1, it would be easy to assume he would fall in line. But from the opening notes, with a crisply distorted blues guitar riff, sharp handclaps, and cumbia scrape, it's apparent that Juanes is here to actually rock.
He's still in love with 70s rock signifiers, but the tropical percussion keeps him light on his feet, and his choice of lyric -- "Yerbatero" literally means "Herbalist," and the song is sung in the voice of a traditional plant-based healer from Latin American indigenous traditions, whose "medicines" soothe the heartache of romantic disappointment by inducing euphoria and altering consciousness -- breaks more sharply with the traditional love-song lyric than he ever has before.
It's easy enough to read "Yerbatero" as being exclusively about marijuana, and the Spanish-speaking stoner audience alone was probably enough to send it to #1, but the byproducts of other indigenously-cultivated plants, from agave to psilocybin to coca to ayahuasca, fit the lyrics just as well, and the lightly psychedelic music video, as well as the guitar tone's imitation of psych-era UK rock, suggest a more generalized valorization of expanded consciousness. But even for the non-indulgers, the sharpness of the rhythm, melody, and song structure are enough to make this the best rock 'n' roll song to have hit #1 in years, probably since Juanes' own "La Camisa Negra", possibly since "Ciega, Sordomuda", and maybe even, depending on the strictness of your definition, ever.
It reigned for only a week before ceding the floor to "Cuando Me Enamoro" again. Which is appropriate: in the broader scope of Latin Pop history, it's a footnote, a glib, self-indulgent appropriation of indigenous culture by a white singer in a very rock tradition; but as rock fades from not just playlists but memory itself, an old white rock-bred listener like myself can't help appreciating its energy and sheer joyful noise.
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