The Sound of la Vida Dominicana

ON Friday evening the Dominican singer Juan Luis Guerra, the Latin Recording Academy's 2007 man of the year, will take the stage for a Madison Square Garden concert fronting his 16-piece band, 3 back-up singers and 4 dancers. If past New York shows are any indication, the crowd will be electrified by his anthemic merengues on the developing world's problems and charmed by his metaphor-laced love ballads, singing along with virtually every word. But in a sense they'll be doing it all in secret.

That is because Mr. Guerra sings in Spanish, rendering his lyrics largely incomprehensible to many New Yorkers, including plenty who love socially conscious lyrics and appreciate a fine turn of phrase.

“I'd love to be more skilled in English, to get songs like 'Ojal que Llueva Caf' into English," Mr. Guerra said, citing the song about rural poverty that vaulted him to fame in 1989. “I'd love it if Americans could understand Dominican culture, Dominican metaphors."

It is a vexing musical problem. Diplomats speak through interpreters, books are translated, movies are subtitled. But music jumps language barriers more awkwardly: the catchall term “world music" is in most cases shorthand for “music whose lyrics we can't understand." Mr. Guerra may have plenty of non-Spanish-speaking admirers -- his current tour includes stops in Stockholm and Amsterdam -- who love him for his gentle voice, catchy melodies, booming brass section and beguiling tropical rhythms but who have little idea what the songs are about.

That wouldn't be so much of a problem if Mr. Guerra's songs were of the “Bsame Mucho" variety, which (in case you didn't know) means “Kiss Me a Lot." But with Mr. Guerra's songs people are actually missing something.