Juan Luis Guerra Seijas (born 7 June 1957) is a Dominican musician, singer, composer, and record producer. He has sold 30 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling Latin music artists. Throughout his career, he has won numerous awards including 23 Latin Grammy Awards, three Grammy Awards, and one Latin Billboard Music Award. Guerra won 3 Latin Grammy Awards in 2010, including Album of the Year. In 2012, he won the Latin Grammy Award for Producer of the Year. Guerra is one of the most internationally recognized Latin artists of recent decades. His popular style of merengue and Latin fusion has garnered him considerable success throughout Latin America. He is also credited for popularizing bachata music on a global level and is often associated with the genre, although his distinct style of bachata features a more traditional bolero rhythm and aesthetic mixed with bossa-nova influenced melodies and harmony in some of his songs. He does not limit himself to one style of music, instead, his music incorporates a wide arrange of diverse rhythms such as merengue, bachata, bolero, balada, fusion, salsa, cumbia, mambo, cha-cha-cha, pop, rock and roll, reggae, classical, R&B, folk, blues, jazz, funk, soul, rock, hip-hop/rap, son cubano, and religious, amongst many others. "Ojalá Que Llueva Café" ("Let's hope it will rain coffee") is one of his most critically acclaimed pieces. Career Early life Guerra studied philosophy and literature at the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo. He then studied guitar and music theory at El Conservatorio Nacional de Música de Santo Domingo, then attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, from which he graduated in 1982 with a diploma in jazz composition. After returning to the Dominican Republic, he released his first album, Soplando (1984), with local musicians who became known as Juan Luis Guerra y 440. The number refers to the standard tuning of A440. The band's name in Spanish is Cuatro Cuarenta ("Four Forty"). According to Guerra, this first album was based on jazz tunes and concepts he had learned at Berklee, and it "wasn't intended to be a commercial hit." Subsequently, however, he began to write more merengues. 1980s In 1983, after a performance in front of the Dominican entrepreneur Bienvenido Rodríguez, Juan Luis Guerra was signed to Karen Records. This marked a radical shift in Guerra's musical style toward merengue. In this period, he recorded two albums, Mudanza y Acarreo in 1985