Shakira, Calle 13 dominate awards, but show falls flat

Posted by: CorrienteLatina  Posted: 11-03-2006 Print Article Email to a friend RSS Twitter Facebook

In a show that lacked sizzle, Shakira was the standout winner at this year's Latin Grammy Awards.

Shakira was the big winner at Thursday night's Latin Grammy Awards, emerging with four awards out of five nominations, winning for Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Album for Fijacion Oral Vol. 1.

The elegantly black-gowned Colombian singer grew more excited as each prize was announced during Univision's live broadcast from New York's Madison Square Garden, practically babbling with joy as she took the final statuette for Record of the Year.

''Everything I know I learned in one place -- I want to thank my people, Barranquilla, Colombia,'' she said.

Calle 13, the irreverent duo whose wildly inventive reggaeton fusion debut was one of the most talked about albums of the year -- but who were snubbed as performers on the Univision show -- came away with awards in all three of the categories for which they were nominated: Best New Artist, Best Short Video and Best Urban Music Album.

Calle 13 rapper Residente literally leapt into his director's arms before accepting the award for Best Short Video. ''There are no words for this,'' he said after they picked up the Urban Music award.

''I believe in music now more than I used to and in the industry,'' Residente said by cellphone from backstage after the show ended.

''I didn't think we were going to win. We're very, very happy. I had a lot of things I wanted to say and I just forgot everything.''

Ricky Martin was honored as Latin Grammy Person of the Year.

There were plenty of salutes to Latin New York for the show's debut in the Big Apple, one of the historic homes of Latin music. But the show felt oddly flat for a world of music that can explode with life.

''There are 8 million stories in this city and 2 million of them are written in Spanish!,'' co-host Lucero announced as the awards show opened. Exuberant Dominican merengue singer Milly Quezada introduced a sheepish Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who emerged trailing a parade of prancing dancers and gamely spoke in horrendously accented Spanish.

''Hasta la vista!'' he said, putting his farewell first.

But the musical tribute to New York salsa, with Willie Colon, the Fania All-Stars, and other salsa stars, was left to the end of the show and was cut off as the telecast ended.

The show played it safe in production and choice of performers, from Andrea Bocelli singing a syrupy bolero medley and Thalia doing what looked like a second-rate rehash of Madonna's Vogue performance costumed as 17th century court decadents in hoop skirts and pantaloons.

A Salute to Reggaeton with Wisin y Yandel, Ivy Queen and Hector El Father looked and sounded chaotic.

There were also unprofessionally awkward moments, as when presenters couldn't explain why quadruple nominee Ricardo Arjona -- also left out of the performances -- didn't appear to accept his award for Best Male Pop Vocal Album.

Lucero and co-host Victor Manuelle couldn't manage anything but lame food and he-she jokes.

Even the biggest star seemed subdued. Shakira sang her broken-hearted torch song No to a simple piano accompaniment, followed by Alejandro Sanz singing the tortured heart A La Primera Persona from his upcoming album. The two of them joined for Shakira's megahit La Tortura, but it lacked the electricity that these artists can generate live.

The only person to say something besides thank you to the usual suspects was Shakira, who paid tribute to, ''All Latinos, especially the immigrants here in the United States who are just trying to achieve their dream -- that someday they receive the recognition that they deserve.''


By JORDAN LEVIN (jlevin@MiamiHerald.com)
Source: Miami Herald

Jordan Levin is The Miami Herald's Latin music critic and covered this story from Miami