Lo Mejor de Daniel Montero

Just as North America experiences unprecedented growth in non-denominational and mega-churches, Latin American nations are following suit. Danilo Montero has been doing it for years. Montero tours throughout Central and South America performing worship concerts to predominantly Catholic audiences, and has been doing so for the last 15 years. His 2003 release Lo Mejor de Danilo Montero en Vivo documents one of the Latin Christian movement's musical figureheads. As christianos hispanos continue to take their music and their cues from the North American Evangelical tradition, so it goes with the contemporary Christian genre, and Montero falls artistically well within this tradition. Though he lifts up "praise en español," and his itinerary favors places like Peru, Colombia and Costa Rica (Montero's home country) the music is absolutely lily-white. As one of the pioneers of Christian music in Latin America, one might think that there would be some stylistic traces of his nationality, but not so. In fairness, Montero does the soaring, dramatic praise chorus well. Or at least as well as everyone else. ~ Evan C. Gutierrez, Rovi