After staggerVives left his attempt to be a ballad and rock singer to become the standard bearer for the modernization of vallenato, a defender of local music and one of the most successful artists the country has had in recent decades.
(Also: Carlos Vives talks about the challenge and the fear of acting again).
Vives, who had also made a career as an actor, had released his third album of ballads, To the center of the city (1989). He was always thought of for the leading role and he himself had initially accepted.
‘Stagger’. It tells the life and work of the Vallenato singer-songwriter Rafael Escalona. It was released in 1991 and its protagonist was the singer Carlos Vives.
It was then, when Carlos Vives announced that he had to reverse the decision to participate. His manager he thought that playing Escalona did not fit into his career.
Before looking for another actor, Cabrera looked for Elisa, traveled to Miami to negotiate. There she had a list of demands: The series couldn’t leave Colombia, she couldn’t record an album with the soundtrack either, and she demanded to put it in writing.
The recording lasted eight months and the series was a complete success. So much so that Vives’ manager later wanted to back down on her own demands.
(An interview with Rafael Escalona: ‘To make music you don’t need to play’).
And of course the album was made stagger, forerunner of The Classics of the Province, that forged the successful path from Vives onwards. And the production could be seen outside of Colombia. Now it is among the offer of productions from the Netflix air catalog.
As an additional curious fact, Cabrera related that years later, in a special made with the teacher Escalona, the same teacher had mixed in his stories the memories of truth and those of fiction represented in the series.
