For 13 years now, Lenny Santos, 30, along with his younger brother, Max Agende Santos, 27, –the guitar and bass player respectively, of the internationally renowned Bachateros band, Aventura– have collectively produced the sweet rhythms over which the voices of Anthony “Romeo” Santos and Henry Santos Jeter sing, together earning the well-merited moniker, “Kings of Bachata.” On Monday, July 20, 2009, just five weeks after the release of their third studio album, The Last – which stood at the summit of the Top Latin Album charts for the fifth consecutive week – the Santos brothers had a scheduled photo shoot at ULM’s trendy Brooklyn facility – located in the rejuvenated district of Dumbo – with a 1 P.M. call time for the annual Music issue.
T’was a perfect, crystal clear summer day. A refreshing breeze reminiscent of the trade winds that cool the Santos’ parents native Puerto Plata, on the northern tip of the Dominican Republic, complimented the weather. The shoot began shortly after 1 P.M., atop the magazine’s sundeck, which rests 30 feet above and positioned behind the banks of the East River, overlooking the spectacular Manhattan skyline. Lenny sat seated on the edge of the patio, calm and prepared for the first shot of the day. Breaking in his newly acquired onyx-and-brown trim guitar, he strung some light tunes while Max was fitted for the full day ahead.
The whole scene seemed surreal. As the photographer positioned Lenny for his best shot, on the blacktop a few feet below the deck stood an abstract sculpture. It was a large web of thinly interconnecting wooden beams that bore a sharp contrast to the picturesque symmetry of the well-groomed esplanade, shadowed by the Manhattan Bridge just south of us. And then it hit me - the landscape surrounding the building took me back to the initial conversation I had with Lenny and Max via conference call, days prior. It served as an allegory for just how far these two musicians from 149th and Trinity Avenue in the South Bronx, had come.
“This morning we came out on Good Day New York with Fox 5, and right now I’m in a studio where I was born and raised - on 149th and Cauldwell,” Max stated days earlier during the call. “I’m right here on the block, doing a track for my boys, who were the Juveniles when we were Los Teenagers.”
The subject of being in his old stomping grounds took Lenny back to their childhood, where he and Max were raised merely two streets from their present day studio. “It was the late ‘80s [and] I was 10 [or] 11-years-old. I still remember those years…[shoot outs], dead people in the streets; prostitutes, and house parties all over the place,” recalled Lenny of some of the perils exposed in the neighborhood. “Mom wasn’t really doing good. Money wise, not that much funds [were] coming in.” Separated from their father, Lenny and Max’s mother was left with the responsibility to raise six children, all boys, in a two-bedroom apartment. With a clan of energetic boys, who’d often jump around the house, setting off complaints from the neighbors below, there were times when she had to rule with an iron fist. A vivid example of their mother’s might came when an 8-year-old Lenny wandered off a few blocks from home one day. “A cop stopped me and asked, ‘where [do] you live?, and where are your parents?’” recounted Lenny, who’s the proud father of four –three girls and a boy. “They put me in the police car and [drove] me home. They took me upstairs to my mother and they were like, ‘What kind of mom are you, leaving your kids out in the street like that?’ She said, ‘I’m sorry officer. I thought it was cool.’ But when she locked that door, I got the ass whipping of my life. I was more scared of my mom than the cops. [Laughs]”
The lesson learned had a profound impact on Lenny, who grew to understand his mother’s disciplinary actions. As the eldest son, his mother’s counsel deterred him and Max from living a destructive lifestyle that devours so many youth’s lives in an area that is notoriously known - especially from the 1970s to the early ‘90s – as one of New York City’s prime examples of urban decay. “I didn’t wanna do nothing,” he explained. “I didn’t wanna hang out with kids that sold drugs, or around [those] that robbed people.” “We had the skelzie games on the street and we would get together to play manhunt [and] football as well,” explained Max, who has 2 sons and a daughter of his own. “We’d form football teams and play other blocks. It was rough, but I was lucky enough to grow up in a neighborhood where everybody knew each other and protected each other. Back then, it was real cool growing up.”
Although, Lenny and Max’s father wasn’t present in the family household, he made it a priority to be part of his son’s life– taking them to Yankees games or the movies every Sunday. But despite his presence, the boys attribute their success to their beacon of guidance. “[Mom] was the mother and father of the house,” said Lenny. “As a single mom raising six kids, she really represented.”
In 1996, inspired by their cousins who lived upstairs, Lenny and Max decided to form their own Bachata band. The journey down memory lane, however, evoked some unflattering experiences from their earlier days as musicians. “We used to play music in front of grocery stores, and all of the sudden we’d be singing and someone would throw cold water at us from the roof,” said Lenny, who was surprised by my initial disbelief. “Yeah man, we would be playing and some haters would go to the roof and throw a bucket of water.” The adverse response from the crowd subsequently resulted in a change of personnel.
Receiving a tip from one of his musicians about a talented vocalist, Anthony Santos (Romeo), who along with his cousin Henry, had been singing in a church choir on 157th Street and Gerard Avenue, Lenny agreed to meet the future lead singer of Aventura. “I was like, ‘aight, bring them.’ Once we met, that was it,” Lenny reveals, of he and Max’s first encounter with Romeo and Henry. “I was the guitarist at that time, [but] also I became the [musical] director and the producer for the group. Anthony wrote all of his songs, and we clicked. Then we started creating original songs [together]. That’s how the group ‘Los Teenagers’ came about.”
The band was complete, and two years later, they were considering a name change. Eventually, they adapted the name “Aventura” at the suggestion of a person, who was, at that time, the group’s de-facto manager. “We kind of figured that we weren’t going to be teenagers forever,” Lenny explains jokingly. “[Back then] we had this guy who was helping us with our image, his name was Julio Cesar. He was like a mentor. He tried to help us get a deal going; he came up with the concept of four guys dressed in regular jeans and tank tops, none of that skin-pretty stuff. He came up with the name ‘Aventura.’” Initially, the group wasn’t fond of the name, even joking that it sounded too similar to “Great Adventures.” But Cesar’s faith persuaded the boys to stick with it, and in 1999, they ended up signing a five-album independent deal with Premium Latin Music.
Anchored by the single, “Cuando Volverás,” Aventura’s debut album, Generation Next, was followed by a myriad of hits in the subsequent years, including “Obsesión” - their commercial breakthrough – “Un Beso’ and “Mi Corazoncito”. Lenny himself pointed out how far they’ve come; from appearing for the first time in ULM on a promotion for their 1999 debut album, to then making the cover in the Best of 2006 issue, and now he and his brother being the subject of this year’s Music issue.
It’s been a long journey to this photo shoot since Aventura first crashed onto the scene. From “breaking the rules” with their nuanced, Hip-Hop and R&B-influenced-Bachata sound, to winning critics over – or shutting them up outright – when Bachata legend, Antony Santos, (literally) crowned the group during a sold out Madison Square Garden concert, the band’s ascent culminated with their latest set. With a decade of dedication, and over three million albums sold worldwide, the group is still signed with Premium Latin. Riding a summer heat wave of unmitigated success with The Last, Lenny proclaims the set as their best entry to date.
“To be honest, this is the best album we’ve ever done,” he declares of the album that debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200, after selling according to Nielsen SoundScan, 47,000 copies in its first week - the biggest opening week for a Latin act, domestically, since Wisin y Yandel’s Wisin y Yandel: Los Extraterrestres sold 53,000 in 2007. “From what we’ve done, it’s my favorite album ... of all time. A lot of artists, when they’re about to come out with an album and do interviews they say, ‘Yeah, this is my best work yet.’ And usually, they do the interviews before their album comes out to hype it. Then when the album comes out, it’s not all that. We could say [ours] is all that, because right now it’s happening. We have five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Top Latin Album chart, so it speaks for itself.
“Two weeks ago, Paulina Rubio came out, [and] we were thinking, ‘Okay, we’re going to go to No. 2 now, or No. 3,’” he continued, “[but] she didn’t take Aventura out of the number one spot. Then on the fourth week, Vicente Fernandez, a huge artist from Mexico, couldn’t take us out of the number one spot, either. And now we’ve been at No. 1 for the fifth week in a row.”
Tally an additional five weeks to that total. At press time, on August 20th, The Last became the first album in three years to hold steady at the summit of Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart for ten consecutive weeks. The feat vaults the Kings of Bachata amongst the ranks of Shakira, Marc Anthony, Daddy Yankee and Christina Aguilera. Since its June 9th release, the set has already reached the RIAA certified 2x platinum mark.
“No other artist in the Latin market over the last three years has been able to accomplish 10 weeks at No. 1 with Nielsen’s Soundscan,” said Ruben Leyva, Managing Director at US Latin-Sony Music. “We congratulate Aventura and are proud to be part of this hard working band’s success, which is especially impressive in today’s market.”
“The biggest award you could get are the fans,” says Max, as he set up for his first shot. “Without them, there would be no shows or albums to be made and bought. An award is something you put on your mantle, and it’s greatly appreciated, but it’s the fans who are going to fill up a stadium, not a bunch of trophies; we prefer the fans over the awards.”
His brother couldn’t agree any more. “A lot of this has to do with the fans; that’s a big boost, they’re like 80 percent of our success,” Lenny concurs. “The other 20 percent is us working our behinds off, promoting very hard. It’s not easy; we’re independent. We’re distributed by Sony, but they look at us like we’re small. You know, I think it’s about time that we should win a Grammy. We were nominated [only] one time. That was last year”.
The title of their new set and its intro has left all sorts of ambiguity concerning the group’s future, and whether or not a separation is imminent. It’d been a sin, as a journalist at least, not to ask: When the novelty of The Last - which will certainly last well into 2010 dies out, are the four members of Aventura going to keep working together beyond that point?
“We’re going to be around forever. I wouldn’t play with any other group if it’s not Aventura,” Lenny says sternly between looks. “I’ll never do that, and Mikey too. He would never be in another group as a bass player. There’s no point. We know how hard it was to get to where we’re at. [And] It wasn’t easy. Starting from zero with a new band, you have to start from the ground again; you gotta start playing little clubs, opening up for this and that guy...You could open a lot of doors, of course, because you’re from Aventura, but it’s not the same. The whole, totally new image, new marketing plan thing - I don’t like that. I’d like it to be like okay, we’re still on tour - Aventura, we’re still doing our tour stuff, selling out stadiums, which [seems to be our theme] nowadays.
“[Everyone] knows that there’s a chemistry in this group that people love,” he went on, “and it has to stay like that. No matter what job title we have on board, that’s just how it is. Mikey’s job is to be the hyped one on his bass [guitar], playing to get the crowd hyped; my job is to direct the band, keep us playing good music and be on point, leading the guitar; Anthony’s job is, of course, to sing and to host the show, be funny and aggressive, make people cry, because he’s the leader on stage; and Henry is the one that’ll be dancing, moving his hips and making girls go crazy. That forms the chemistry of an Aventura live show.”
