Juan Luis Guerra Tops List of Latin Grammy Nominations

September 25, 2012, 4:17 pm

By LARRY ROHTER

The veteran Dominican singer-songwriter Juan Luis Guerra leads the list of contenders for this year's edition of the Latin Grammy awards, picking up six nominations on Tuesday. In the song of the year category, Mr. Guerra even ended up competing against himself, with two of his compositions vying for that honor. The Mexican brother-sister pop duo Jesse& Joy followed with five Latin Grammy nominations, while the Colombian rocker Juanes, Guatemala's Ricardo Arjona and the Brazilians Caetano Veloso and Ivete Sangalo were among the artists getting four.

Most of Mr. Guerra's nominations came in connection with his collaboration with Juanes on the latter's “MTV Unplugged” CD, which was nominated for album of the year. Mr. Guerra does not perform on that record, but he produced and arranged it, and co-wrote with Juanes “Azul Sabina,” a track that was nominated both for record of the year, which covers performances, and song of the year, which has to do with compositions. He also got two nominations for “En El Cielo No Hay Hospital” (“In Heaven There Are No Hospitals”) from an album of religiously themed songs aimed at the Christian music market.

Overall, “Juanes MTV Unplugged” was nominated for five Latin Grammys, a total matched by Jesse & Joy's “Con Quien Queda el Perro?” (“Who Gets the Dog?”). Other contenders for album of the year come from a variety of genres, ranging from the mainstream pop of Mr. Arjona's Independiente” to the jazz of “Dear Diz (Every Day I Think of You),” Arturo Sandoval's tribute to his fellow trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie, and the Brazilian tropicalia of “Especial Ivete, Gil e Caeta no,” a collaboration featuring Mr. Veloso, Ms. Sangalo and Gilberto Gil.

The Latin recording academy also designated Mr. Veloso as its “person of the year” for 2012, which is a kind of career recognition award. That and the other Grammys will be presented in Las Vegas on Nov. 15 in an awards ceremony that will be televised on Univsion. The number of artists competing for recognition at the event will be higher than in the past because in each of the four main general categories (best album, song, recording and new artist) the number of nominees this year doubled to 10.