The help. This week: Alberto Slezynger, musician, producer, performer, hit-maker.

By Gonzalo López Martí – LMMIAMI.COM

In the ad business we rarely ask the opinion of the artists-for-hire who help us bring to life our lofty, world-changing, award-winning ideas. Namely film directors, photographers, web developers and so on. We expect them to hit the ground running, give us exactly want we want, when we want it, at the price we set, no questions asked. This series of articles will humbly attempt to right this wrong.

Alberto Slezynger doesn’t need much of an introduction, his and his company’s name, Personal Music, are top-of-mind in our industry. He sold millions of records and filled stadiums with his band Daiquiri back in the day. We’ve certainly heard his tunes. A lot. But have we heard his life’s story and his opinions? Voilá.

By the way, this just in: after 20 years, Daiquiri is planning a reunion. You got the global exclusive here.

Q: Mention the best campaigns you have seen recently.

AS: I liked very much “Soul”, the Mercedes Benz 2013 Super Bowl ad featuring Willem Dafoe, Usher & Kate Upton. I apologize for including one of my campaigns here but I am very proud of “Los felinos de la noche” the branded intitiative Fire Advertainment and Alma created for insurance company State Farm. It was truly a breakthrough in our industry. Los Felinos de lo noche launched a record and went on tour. The entire project was conceived and developed from scratch, including the songs, the production, the casting and recruitment of the musicians (they were real musicians, of course, this was not a Milli Vanilli band)

Q: Mention the worst campaigns you have seen recently.

AS: We are artists, sure, but our job is to help brands raise their awareness and sell. I can’t mention a campaign I dislike personally but ultimately the test is sales.

Q: What’s your take on social media?

AS: Record labels were the gatekeepers and curators of music. They lost that power. YouTube is the new digital global stage. Social media trends shape and are the barometer of taste in popular music. The old distribution model is gone, thus the compensation model is broken. Playing live is the only revenue model that persists.

Q: What’s the future of the musical landscape: delivery pipeline, delivery platforms, sales?

AS: Social media and digital sharing are turning the idea of intellectual property on its head. It happened so fast that legislation hasn’t been able to catch up. ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers) is putting up a fight with the streaming platforms like Pandora and Spotify. I’ve heard of songs that got 5 million plays and the authors only received 250 dollars in royalties. It is unfair. Streaming platforms have manipulated consumers into believing music has no ownership. These platforms should share the wealth to protect composers and authors, otherwise they will stifle the very source of their content. iTunes has revolutionized the way music is sold and delivered too. Billboard was forced to remove a zero from the scale of sales they use to award gold & platinum records. I see various potential outcomes. The most likely scenario: a majority of musicians will just be hobbyists, making music as a pastime and holding jobs in other fields to put food on their tables. The norm of the industry will be a succession of so-called “one hit wonders” semi randomly found on YouTube every couple months.

Q: When and how did you start in the business? Did someone mentor you or give you your break?

I was born in Cuba and raised in Venezuela, in Caracas. My parents, particularly my mom, made a point of giving me a classical music education. Music runs in our DNA. Halfway through high school I was already playing semi professionally in a band: school plays, weddings and the like. The highlight of my career at this point was when I had to obtain a signed parental release form to allow me, a minor, to play on a cruise for week. I spent a week in the Caribbean performing with my band at the boat’s nightclub. Later on, I applied to attend the Royal College of Music in London but at that point the family DNA took a backseat to a more secular POV: my parents discouraged me from pursuing my dream and pushed me to study engineering and economics. I attended and finished college to become a professor in economics. Of course, I was still composing and performing on the side. I had a band, Sietecuero. We played a Latin brand of progressive rock along the lines of, say, Santana. Sietecuero had a nice-size following in college circles. We rubbed shoulders with the bohemian scene in Caracas. At that point –late 70s- I obtained a scholarship to pursue a masters degree from the New School of Social Research in NYC. I also landed a gig as professor on a course with a slightly politically incorrect name: Economy of Latin American Underdeveloment. On top of that, mind you, I studied composition, arrangements, piano and songwriting. There was a vibrant Latin fusion scene going on in NY at the time (there always is). After I got my masters degree, I returned to Caracas. I was homesick. NY is too cold. Back home, I knocked the doors of several record labels to try and sell my newly-acquired Latin fusion musical ideas. Problem is, record labels didn’t quite get this new genre I was trying to pitch to them. They felt it was not commercial enough, maybe. Plus, I was a one-man band (which I had christened Daiquiri, alluding to the cocktail of styles and genres I was partial to). In this quixotic quest, out of sheer chance, I connected with a friend who was assigned to run a record label linked to a TV station. My friend wasn’t particularly into music but he was under pressure to come up with something pronto, he needed material to show his superiors he was at least trying to get this nascent record label up on its feet. I was still working as an economist but I found time to give him two pretty neat tracks. They were just demos yet the boss liked them so I fleshed out the tracks with the help of a producer friend of mine from NY. They launched the record. Maybe I’ll make some cash out of this to buy a car, I thought to myself. Next thing you know, the record went gold: 50k units sold. That was the moment when I finally decided to drop everything and dive into music with both feet. Finally, Daiquiri was giving me the opportunity to get rid of the suit and tie. I completed the band with the best session musicians in Venezuela. Eventually we went triple platinum: 300k units sold. Tours. Colombia. Ecuador. Full houses. Concerts with 20,000 people were the norm. We toured for seven years. We are talking about the late 80s and to this day Daiquiri still gets lots of airplay in Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Our song “La casa del ritmo” became a classic, it is still popular among young people. A truly cross-generational hit. Cut to the early 90s. Being an economist, I could sense an economic downturn looming ahead. The big party we had enjoyed in Venezuela for ten or so years was coming to an end. Record labels became risk-averse and reluctant to bet on local bands. They just wanted to release proven international hits. Doing some research among musician friends I found out that many colleagues had fairly lucrative side businesses creating “jingles” for advertising. So I decided to give it a shot and opened Personal Audio. It proved to be a smart lateral professional move: for 5 or 6 years I devoted my energy to it and achieved a pretty solid clientele. I had the opportunity to compose music for international campaigns. I won international awards. The highlight of this period of my career was when Coca-Cola launched its famous marketing blitz in Venezuela in 95: Leo Burnett hired me to adapt Coke’s  US jingle not only for Venezuela but for other countries in the region as well. It was the start of a very fruitful relationship with the soft drinks giant. I even did music for Coca-Cola in the US on a campaign that featured a young Jennifer López, through the legendary Spanish agency Casadevall Pedreño, where I made great friends, like José María Piera and Pepino García. Unfortunately, by then my predictions for the Venezuelan economy became true. Come the mid 90s the deterioration was clear and present. I had a child. I felt that I needed to open shop some place else before it was too late. So I flew to Miami to test the grounds. I grabbed the Miami yellow pages (I kid you not) and I cold called what was then Del Rivero Messianu. I asked to talk to the creative director and José Luis Villa took my call. Next thing you know, I was showing him my reel (him and his entire creative department). Oddly enough, Miami being a key hub in the music business, there weren’t any local shops doing music for advertising. Miami has been a hotbed of the musical industry for decades. Since the late 50s, Miami-based Criteria Studios has attracted the world’s best artists to produce their work here: from Bob Dylan to ABBA, from Lynyrd Synyrd to Soda Stereo. The Beach Boys, Marilyn Manson, Billy Joel, David Bowie, Eric Clapton, REM, Crosby, Stills & Nash. The list is more than impressive. UM (University of Miami) has one of the best musical programs in the world. Nevertheless, when I arrived here in South Florida, most “jingles” were done in LA and NYC. I sensed an opportunity. To be sure, the very week I was in Miami pondering my future Variety magazine came out with a cover that read “The boom of the US Hispanic market”. I didn’t need more convincing. Shortly thereafter, in 96, I moved to Miami and opened a studio on Lincoln Road. Jobs started to flow in. Sergio Alcocer, whom I had met working in Caracas and was by then based in NYC, started sending assignments my way. I quickly made a name for myself. The campaigns I worked for won awards. Eventually we outgrew the SoBe studio and moved to the Accord building in the Grove, where we are now. Cut to 2014. The one-man operation from the early days when I did everything -composing, instruments, arrangements- are long gone: I now have three autonomous recording studios to do anything and everything related to music, voice-overs and audio post production. I lead and supervise 12 off-site modular teams of top-notch musicians in Miami, NY, Buenos Aires, LA and London. I now have a creative & music partner, Alexis Estiz; audio post-producer and sound designer, Luis Gómez; an exec producer, Vanessa Lozano; two office managers and one intern. ¿Awards? Several Cannes Lions, Clios, London, San Sebastián, el Ojo de Iberoamérica, FIAP.

By the way, this is an exclusive I’m giving you: after 20 years there’s a new Daiquiri record coming out. Soon. I’m working with the best of the best session artists in Miami. The record will include new versions of the seven original hits of the band and six new tracks, with the collaboration of prestigious co-composers such as Jorge Villamizar, Jorge Luis Piloto and Fernando Osorio.

Q: Your trajectory & reputation in the ad world is second to none, but many people don’t know you are also an insider of sorts in the broadcast TV business: your music plays during commercial breaks and during the actual shows too.

AS: True. Once we felt we were solid in the ad industry, some 10 years ago, we made a move into the TV world. The music we’ve developed for telenovelas and all sorts of programming has played in over 60 countries. There was a bit of a learning curve. For one thing, the compensation mechanism is different in TV: composers get the so called “writer’s share”, a payment mechanism closely tied to airplay. We’ve composed and performed lots soundtracks for NBC Telemundo: Amor descarado, Anita no te rajes, El cuerpo del deseo, La viuda de blanco, Corazón valiente, Marido en alquiler. With bragging rights too: we won ASCAP prizes for best TV song, both from ASCAP Latino and ASCAP mainstream in 2013 and 2014. We’ve also made music for Disney for shows in Europe and Latin America, such as the various iterations of Amas de casa desesperadas (Desperate housewives) Currently I’m musical director of Yo soy el artista, developing and supervising all the musical content of the show. It was truly a challenge and an honor to accept this opportunity because I am working closely with two pioneers in the world of reality TV: Toni Cruz & Josep María Mainat, creators of Operación Triunfo in Spain, which a lot of people don’t know singlehandledly initiated the genre later adopted by American idol, The Voice, The X factor, America’s got talent and the like. Yes, just so you know, it was not Simon Cowell’s idea: two very Hispanic minds created the concept which subsequently was acquired by Endemol to be taken worldwide.

Q: Would you say we have reached the tipping point of Total Market and total crossover?

AS: Certainly. It is an achievement of the US Hispanic market as a whole. We are on the radar now. Big time. We are being noticed globally. We are in the big leagues. Our competition is the global mainstream market. We are not niche players anymore. Still, as immigrants in the US we tend to have a bit of a lower self esteem. It permeates our behavior as citizens, as employees, as entrepreneurs. We must overcome this inferiority complex. We just need to keep proving ourselves. It takes hard work, of course. I always say that working in the US is a permanent boxing match in which the bell never saves you. One has to keep throwing and taking punches non-stop. It takes lots of stamina but it is worth it. We are obtaining palpable results. The US Hispanic market has changed radically in the last 15 years. We are the third largest “country” in Latin America. We are finally regarding ourselves as a block. I remember when every radio or TV spot had to be trafficked with two different versions of voice over & music: a “Mexican” version for the west & southwest, a “Caribbean” version for the east coast. Now we do only one in our adopted language of “neutral Spanish”, that curious and inclusive brand of the language of Cervantes only spoken in the US, with bits and pieces of multiple idioms, accents and inflections. This is an achievement of our media industry. Our networks and media outlets have done a great job at unifying a community that used to be quite fragmented. Gracias Don Francisco! Fifteen years ago bachata was only an east coast thing. Now it is a hit in LA. Ten years ago I went to St. Louis to give a speech to the Anheuser Busch marketing department about the future of Latin music in the US. We discussed whether singing with an accent could represent a problem. Now it is not an issue at all. Shakira has proven all the naysayers wrong. Unfortunately, nobody has done a thorough sociological analysis of what this particular and unique US Hispanic ethos or nationality represents, this curious phenomenon in which you come here to adopt an identity in which your original citizenship takes a back seat. There’s a new open-minded US Hispanic self that mingles freely and naturally with other Hispanic groups. We don’t bicker with one another anymore. We’ve left our differences behind. We deliberately blend our cultures to make a bigger, bolder and stronger one. Nowhere is this more manifested than in the music biz. To me, the before & after moment was when Ricky Martin sang Livin’ la vida loca at that 1999 Grammy ceremony. It was a moment akin to The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. There’s a new vibrant, universal, super successful crossover music fusion phenomenon carrying rhythms and arrangements from all over Latina America. A unified front, a block. These days, with the mainstream in this country so divided and polarized, our national leaders can borrow a page from the US Hispanic journey and mend fences. The mainstream needs to pay more attention to Hispanic culture. The US democratic experiment has achieved a diversity and a richness that was badly needed by mainstream America. As I said, our media has had a critical role influencing public opinion and public sentiment. There are multiple outlets catering to Hispanics and they all go out of their way to be inclusive. There’s a lesson to be learned here and a huge opportunity to shape the culture coming our way, socially, economically, politically, legally. Hispanic social and business leaders must embrace this opportunity pronto. America as a whole is in a privileged position to take full advantage of this. Good thing is, this is a nation that never misses these opportunities. I don’t know of any other country that grants residence & work permits to people with “exceptional abilities”. Whether you are a scientist or a dancer, the door is open here, talent is attracted and rewarded.