Biography:
Aventura is a Bachata music group formed in The Bronx, New York in 1996. The group comprises lead singer and featured composer Anthony Santos, guitarist and producer Lenny Santos, bassist Max Santos, and singer and composer Henry Santos Jeter.
The members of Aventura are typical of this generation, combining the influence of traditional bachata with cultural diversity of life in Dominican Republic. The group’s lead singer and songwriter, named Anthony Santos, was born in the Bronx to a Dominican father and a Puerto Rican mother. His cousin, who also sings and writes songs for the band, Henry Santos Jeter, is the only member of Aventura who was born in the Dominican Republic; he moved to New York at the age of 13. Lenny Santos, the group’s lead guitarist and arranger, and his brother Mikey, who plays bass, are both Bronx natives of Dominican origin.
All of them grew up listening to the most popular bachateros of the era—singers like Blas Durán, Raulín Rodríguez, Teodoro Reyes, and Joe Veras—but the biggest influence on the group was Antony Santos. The first member of Aventura to try his hand at music was Lenny Santos, who produced and arranged the first two albums for bachatero Elvis Martínez, who would later be known as “El Camarón.” At the same time, Santos started his own band with his brother Mikey and a neghborhood friend named David Maceo who started singing with them and later left to the Dominican Republic. When they needed a singer, Bryant Berroa a friend told them about a kid from the block who sang, and Anthony "Romeo" Santos joined the group, followed by his cousin Henry Santos Jeter. Such an environment was hardly comparable to that of the members of Aventura when they began as los teenagers.
Rather than operate in the world of other bachata groups of the day, Aventura began their career playing for a specialized fan base of their friends and other local young people. This public was made up of the children of immigrants who, like the members of the group, had grown up in the US, spoke English as much or more than Spanish and shared a broader Latino-American culture rather than a strictly Dominican one. Signed to BMG, they released their debut—with an outside producer. The material, however, was their own, and they resisted the attempt to turn them into a cookie-cutter boy band in the style of the Backstreet Boys or *NSYNC by ensuring the bachata element remained dominant, and released their first album Trampa de Amor. The group’s local success caught the attention of producer Julio Cesar of Premium Latin and he signed them to a long-term record deal and changed their name to Aventura.
On Friday December 4, 2009 during their Houston, TX concert, Aventura was honored with the key to the city of Houston.
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