When the guys from Grupo Frontera came down from the main stage of Coachella, one of the most important music festivals in the United States, last Saturday, they were silent, analyzing what had just happened.
Just a day before, Bad Bunny invited them to sing three of his songs:
No se va
,
Bebe dame
and
Un x100to
, the latter with him.
Before starting, they were afraid that the imposing public would not know their lyrics.
“As soon as
No se va
begins , all the people began to sing it.
It was something very beautiful”, now recalls Adelaido
Payo
Solís, the singer.
The five musicians of the group,
Payo
(20 years old), Julián Peña (27), Carlos Guerrero (28), Alberto
Beto
Acosta (31) and Juan Javier Cantó (29) are sitting in a studio in Texas.
Laughing and assimilating their early success —the group was born just over a year ago—, the boys address their current stellar situation in a video call with EL PAÍS: with one of the greatest hits of the moment in their repertoire, preparing the launch of a new album and finalizing their
The Beginning
tour , which will take them to 25 cities in the United States starting in May.
Grupo Frontera was formed in the border town of MacAllen, in Texas.
One year after its inception, the five boys maintain their regional Mexican essence, based on norteña cumbia rhythms and grupera music, and with lyrics of love, heartbreak and melancholy.
“In South Texas, where we are from, the music that emanates, where there is more work, is in the Mexican region [...] We started the plan to make music with our hearts and to work playing at parties, weddings... It was a genre that people needed”, says Cantó, the group's accordionist.
All the members of the band were born north of the border with Mexico, except for Cantó himself, who was born in Monterrey, in northern Nuevo León.
Even so, they all maintain that Mexican identity, and not only through their music.
On stage and in their music videos, they wear hats and boots, in true norteño style.
At times, their answers are built together, trying to give the most concrete detail: one answers, another expands and another refines.
“Our families come from the north of Mexico, where you wear a hat and boots to go everywhere,” says Peña, the band's percussionist;
“We wear more urban clothes, but with respect for the hat and boots”, adds
Payo
;
“We bring our roots.
We are modern, but at the same time we teach that we follow the traditional”, concludes Cantó.
an unexpected northerner
In recent days, his style—aesthetic and musical—has gone beyond the US and Mexican borders.
The song from
Un x100to
was going to be the first single from their next album, a Mexicanized cumbia grupera that they planned to release without collaboration, until the last moment.
"At the moment we were going to record the video for the song, when we were all ready, with hats on, they told us that there was going to be a change [...] Suddenly we saw a man walk out of
his
trailer .
When we saw him come in,
Payito
put on a smitten face,” recalls Peña as they begin to laugh.
"I was in
shock
, still, with his mouth open ”, adds the singer.
The single, one of the songs from the new album, ended up becoming a collaboration with the Puerto Rican Bad Bunny.
In a single day, the song reached first place in Spotify's
global
Top 50
, and ventured into other charts, giving new impetus to the group and to the regional genre that triumphs in the catalogs.
Grupo Frontera receives the Latin American Music Award.COURTESY
The contagion on the Puerto Rican also reached his aesthetics.
“We didn't tell him anything, he just put on the border style, with boots and everything.
My compadre just
lacked his hat, but at Coachella he put it on ”, laughs Cantó.
The five only have good words for Benito [Bad Bunny's real name], who only a few days later invited them to go up to the festival's main stage.
“It was his idea.
That got me more excited.
I had understood that we were only going to play the one by
Un x100to;
and he came and told us 'you are going to play three songs,' says Payo, maintaining the emotion he felt that same day before performing.
They didn't want to touch them in their entirety so as not to occupy the show.
“We told him 'half of
No se va
, half of
Bebe give me
and
A complete x100to
.
And it came out perfect”, concludes the accordionist.
The boys in the group did not expect to arrive at Coachella hand in hand with the regional style.
"Honestly, we didn't expect that.
When we went up and people began to scream
as soon as
they saw us, it was something that gave us a lot of emotion.
I took off one of the
in-ears
[the wireless headphones used by musicians to hear their voices] just to hear what was going on, and I heard everyone singing the
No se va, no va
… It made me very proud to know that the music The one we grew up with is being heard anywhere”, recalls the singer.
The success achieved by Grupo Frontera was about to become an anecdote.
His version of the song
No se va —
by the Colombian pop group Morat — was about to stay in the closet.
“The truth is that we didn't even want to release the song, because there were some errors;
besides that we were very stressed by time.
They were running us from where we were recording, but we decided to get her out.
When we saw that it was sticking so much on TikTok and elsewhere we already said 'well… ”, affirms the singer, and without finishing the sentence, he unleashes the joint laughter of his colleagues.
The version —which already has almost the same views as the original on Spotify— led them to win the Latin American Music Award last week, an annual American music award, for the best regional Mexican song of the year.
Only a year ago, the life of the musicians was completely different: Cantó, the accordionist, had his ranch;
Beto
, the guitarist, a photographic studio;
Guerrero, the drummer, a transportation company;
Peña, the percussionist, was a finance manager at a car dealership;
and
Payo
, the singer, made fences for a community.
“For us it represents being able to do this as a job.
It's a dream.
All of us said one day we said: 'you know what?, it would be nice to live from music'.
When that opportunity arrives, I don't think anyone believes it,” says Peña.
One day he decided to put the tie and his office job aside: “I'm going to leave [the agency].
I believe in the project and I am going to remain 100% to the music”.
The five from Grupo Frontera are now preparing the release of a new album and the start of their tour, with a feeling of renewal and promising high expectations: “We are very excited.
We have many surprises, special guests, a production on another level”, comments Cantó;
"Before, or starting the tour, we are going to start releasing our album, also to have more repertoire," adds
Payo
.
And Peña finishes specifying the answer: “We are going to do more urban cumbia, as you can say.
It's still the same northern cumbia, but with younger, newer lyrics.
That it maintain the style that we have maintained lately and that I think people are liking.
Very cool things are coming on the album ”.
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