MIAMI (Billboard) - The idea was born over lunch and drinks. It was early March, and Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador were on the brink of war after a Colombian anti-guerrilla raid into Ecuador.
For Colombian star Juanes, the notion was incomprehensible. "I'll go to the border with my guitar and sing to fix this," he said.
"No," his manager, Fernan Martinez, replied. "If we do this, we go all out."
Ten days later, on March 16, Juanes -- along with fellow Colombian Carlos Vives, Venezuelan Ricardo Montaner, Spaniards Miguel Bose and Alejandro Sanz, Dominican Juan Luis Guerra and Ecuadorean Juan Fernando Velasco -- hosted a massive concert for peace. Nearly 100,000 fans gathered around a makeshift stage built in the middle of the bridge that connects Colombia with Venezuela.
The free concert was funded entirely by donations and will not generate a penny in profit; all networks that aired it worldwide could do so only without commercials or sponsorships.
"The objective of this show was utterly noncommercial, and we didn't want anything to distract from that," Juanes says.
But how does one get seven Latin superstars to play gratis, in the middle of nowhere, and at a moment's notice?
The morning of Thursday, March 6, after Juanes' concert at Madison Square Garden, popular morning show "La W" on the station of the same name (heard in Spain and throughout Latin America) announced the Juanes-hosted Concert for Peace in Colombia.
By the time Martinez woke up, he already had 30 messages of support on his cell phone. The concert was officially on.
Also that morning, Juanes sent a text message to his friend Sanz. Would he play, for free, for peace? "I'll be there, bro," Sanz wrote. "Just say where and when."
During a hastily arranged press conference the same day, Martinez got word that the presidents of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador had settled their differences, at least in terms of the immediate stand-off. But by then, Guerra and Bose had also confirmed their participation. It would be a celebratory concert, then. And it needed to take place as quickly as possible.
The following Sunday, Martinez flew to Cucuta, a border city that's the gateway between Colombia and Venezuela. For symbolic reasons, the concert had to be in that city, on that bridge. It had to be on a Sunday, the only day the bridge could be closed without affecting commerce, and it had to be during the day to avoid lighting costs.
Looking around, Martinez found a little bridge, sitting in the middle of a garbage dump with hovering vultures. "But I could also see a stage," he says.
The local government lent tractors and clean-up gear, but it was the police and the local 200-man army brigade that rolled up their sleeves and cleaned up the place.
By then, companies had started to call, offering services and cash in exchange for banners, merchandising, advertising and TV rights. No dice, Martinez said. It would be a "white" concert, without any commercial messages whatsoever.
All told, they raised approximately $400,000, which went to pay for side musicians, workers, hotels and production crews. Everything else was donated, including the material to build the stage and the trucks that transported sound equipment and gear, rented in Bogota, Colombia, 16 hours away by car. Colombian flower growers donated 500,000 white carnations. Five private jets were lent to fly in artists.
Each artist would bring three musicians, but the house band was Juanes' guitarist, percussionist, keyboardist and drummer. Three days before the show, each artist e-mailed MP3s with their song selections for the band to learn.
On Saturday, March 15, Juanes played a concert in Puerto Rico, and at 4 a.m. boarded a cargo plane bound for Cucuta. That evening, he and the musicians had their one and only soundcheck.
The next morning, Vives and Montaner arrived. At 1 p.m., minutes before curtain time, Guerra and Sanz landed. There was no rehearsal. There was no plan, really, beyond the order of performances and the notion that everyone should wear white.
"We started to walk to the stage along the bridge," Juanes says. "And all of a sudden, we started to see the people. There were flags from Colombia, from Venezuela, from Ecuador. Everybody was dressed in white. We could have not played a note, and it would have been enough. We were together for music and to send a message of peace."
The next day, the troops cleaned up the area around the bridge. And with money left over from the donations, the former garbage dump will be turned into a public park.
