Boleros de Noche founder Roberto Carlos calls himself ‘a romantic rebel’

After a lifetime of performing bolero music, Roberto Carlos thinks that the genre is poised to take off. 

Carlos is the founder of the Boleros de Noche festival, which is scheduled for a Symphony Center Presents Featured Concert on April 12, and also a member of the trio Tres Souls, appearing on the bill. A celebration of the Latin American music genre, Boleros de Noche has been an annual event in Los Angeles for 10 years. But the upcoming first road trip to Chicago is part of a busier touring schedule for Tres Souls.

“It’s poetic, it’s nostalgic, it’s cultural, it’s family,” Carlos said of bolero music. The form started in Cuba in the late 1800s, then it spread across Latin America, absorbing other influences in other countries. The music is slow and guitar-based; the lyrics are sophisticated and romantic.

Bolero musicians are often hired for weddings or small gatherings, but their presence in the concert hall is blossoming. “I would never have imagined performing in Chicago, Detroit, Maine, Hawaii,” Carlos said. “The opportunities are really growing for bolero artists.” Now he can envision making a living only doing concerts, which he wouldn’t have thought possible as recently as five or six years ago. And playing venues like Disney Hall in Los Angeles or Symphony Center in Chicago carries a sense of prestige.

Carlos’ father introduced him to bolero when he was a child, and soon afterward he was busking on the streets of Los Angeles. “He was so passionate about bolero music, and he wanted to share it with his son,” Carlos said. But as a young man, he was also influenced by other street musicians he met, continuing the transmission of the traditional form.

Carlos identifies several strands within the world of bolero. The most traditional groups, such as Trío Remembranza, which also will perform in Chicago, are “raw; [they] strip it down and [say] show me what you’ve got.” They perform with two guitars and one requinto, a smaller, higher-pitched type of guitar. Carlos’ group, Tres Souls, writes original music, performs in both English and Spanish, and uses more harmonies with guitar, requinto and vocalist.

But according to Carlos, the traditionalists and the innovators are not in conflict. “Every time someone writes something new, it’s good for the genre,” he said. And other influences are at work, too. Even an 11-piece salsa band, can perform bolero music in its own style, he said, because its individual musicians understand the roots.

Presenting a concert, he said, is a totally different mentality than playing at a wedding or doing another gig where he is hired as background music. “It’s black and white,” he said. “You need a curated set list, you have to engage with the crowd, you have to be more present and vulnerable.”

As the music has spread beyond its roots, Carlos also has to get used to interacting with crowds in two languages. Tres Souls will perform many songs with some verses in English and some in Spanish; he now talks to the crowd in both languages. But putting himself in the place of his parents when he was a child, he makes sure that it won’t all be English. To appeal to a multigenerational crowd, he tries to program something that will connect to everyone in the audience.

“People are hungry for something more raw, something more real,” he said, thinking about the spread of bolero. In areas without a large Hispanic population, he said, word of mouth and social media has done a lot for Tres Souls.

In addition, bolero music carries a note of rebellion. “When I meet another bolero fan, I feel an instant connection, because they understand the lyrics and the history,“ he said. ”I call myself a romantic rebel, because in this music we can be ourselves and connect with our whole families.”