We Can Create Our Own World: An Interview with Fabi Reyna from Reyna Tropical

Reyna Tropical released Malegría this past March, their debut album and first extended release in a few years. It was also the first release without half the duo after tragic passing of Nectali “Sumo Hair” Diaz. Fabi Reyna has kept the project and this first album, named after a portmanteau titled Manu Chao song, is a testament to Queer and Indigenous sensuality and existence.

The album features romance. It navigates grief. It reminisces and it looks forward. These contrasts are what pull the music forward. But at the end, it’s an intimate voyage that Reyna takes us along with, hearing Sumo Hair in various recordings with her soft vocals wrapping us up like a blanket on a cloudy day on the beach.

Reyna Tropical has also been on tour for most of this year, on support for other artists or solo touring to spread Malegría to audiences around the globe. In this interview, we talk about the album, touring, managing multiple projects at once, and more.

This interview was edited for clarity and length. It was done via phone call on September 19th, the day Reyna Tropical premiered the “Conocerla” music video in New York.

Antonio Villaseñor-Baca: How are you doing with the tour? I think you have the “Conocerla” video premiere coming up or it just passed. What are you up to right now? And how are you doing?

Fabi Reyna: I’m literally in the car driving to New York for the “Conocerla” premiere, gonna play tonight. Then I go straight into the next tour and yeah, I’ve been touring kind of nonstop since March. It’s been amazing, honestly. I think a lot of people connect with this album and just the energy that surrounds this album in every city. Well, all the tours have been mainly sold out. So it’s just been really, really beautiful.

Awesome. I’m really glad to hear it. Can you tell me a little bit about the premiere today? How does it feel to have the video for “Conocerla” out? And what can you tell me about the video?

Yeah, it’s our first video from the album. “Conocerla”, the video is really like about queer, trans, sensuality, queer, trans, non-binary pleasure, and just really being in our pleasure and then our erotic sensuality as Latinx folks. Specifically, for me, it is a big deal to be able to be in my full expression of pleasure as someone who grew up witnessing a lot of shame at the border towards women and just a lot of violence surrounding people repressing themselves. So I feel really excited to be able to be my own lesbian self on film.

That’s awesome. While doing the research for this interview, I saw some quotes that you had given. I think your music and a lot of your work have always been so conscientious of the testament that space gives Latine folks in music but in general. Can you talk a little bit about how this awareness and the idea of space kind of played into making this album?

For me, I think growing up queer and growing up fem and growing up different, especially in cultures like Latinx, especially cultures like Mexican or frontera cultures, that usually are just very strict. As for me, my whole sort of purpose in life is to create spaces and subcultures where we, as queer people and as fem or nonbinary folks, can be in our fullest expression. So this album I hope is a place where and it’s a space that people can go to, to question topics of identity and question topics of culture and be able to say, ‘I don’t wanna be in a culture, a part of a culture that is racist or anti-Indigenous or homophobic.’ Like we can create our own world.

Right on. Yeah, I love that because the music really stuck to, or at least in my opinion, I think it stuck on such an authentic note. The music was just a very, I’m here type of vibe and, it wasn’t self-ostracizing. It was just very fun. But it’s intimate. Malegría is listed as the first full-length album non-EP for Reyna Tropical. But it’s also the first longer release without Sumo Hair. What was it kind of like working on this without him?

Grief is a really powerful and big energy, and I think what I’m really so grateful for, Malegría, is that I had somewhere to put it, that I had a release for it. I had an outlet and I think it’s so important to have an outlet when you’re holding so much grief and to let it out and to share it. So, for me, it was what was the most difficult was that I really didn’t wanna release it. I really wanted to stay in my room and be in the darkness and not come out. And I think what was really hard and healing at the same time, singing about it and figuring out ways to be the new version of myself. I really can create all, the voice is really still here, and we collaborate in other ways through other mediums, through ancestor portals, and just feeling the magic of that connection, that ancestor connection, and feeling really alive and awake from those kinds of communications. I don’t know, to me, creating Malegría was a sort of like self-realization and also the realization that existing on this earth is so much bigger than I ever thought.

That’s lovely. I definitely think grief was the immediate thought that popped into my head, not just because of the context of the album, but I think one of the first songs, I think it is the first song “Aquí Te Cuido” has a line towards the end that says ‘por eso tengo que hacerlo sin ti.’

Yeah, and you know what’s really interesting? Actually, most of these songs I wrote were not with Sumo, including “Aquí Te Cuido”. So it’s actually really interesting because most of these songs, if not all of them, were written before he passed away. It’s just that, I don’t know, for whatever reason, the lyrics that were coming through at that point were also sort of preparing me for what was to come, and putting all the pieces together, it makes perfect sense for putting the words to what I’m going through now. So there was a lot of kind of funny little magic happening and ancestors, that isn’t just Sumo, but other ancestors that were really preparing me for what was coming.

Wow. I never would have guessed that. I don’t wanna say it changes the music, but it definitely adds a lot to the narrative throughout the album. Throughout the album, there’s this cadence that has between the tracks themselves, their length, some skit-like songs that are a little bit shorter and have more dialogue in them. There are these very powerful breaks. They feel like very strong breaths that give us a moment to reflect throughout the album because there is so much. It’s very heavy, and then the music and these breaths are so light, and I think it makes the album and the songs all together move a lot more and makes us as listeners kind of like it’s what puts us in this very intimate space. Can you talk a little bit about that and arranging it and what those shorter tracks do?

Yeah, what I knew at the beginning of putting this album together and finishing a song was that I wanted it to feel like a documentary. It was almost like you were watching the story unfold and the interludes for me were to have a space to come back to these moments so that I didn’t have to think about them in my everyday life. I wanted a container for them, almost like a memory book. I wanted everyone to know the love that existed between me and one of my best friends [Sumo Hair]. The power that was created really in terms of having conversations, like Afro-Mexico and queer love. I think the interludes really get to bring you into that intimate space in terms of, like, that can be you and your best friend talking, you know? It really grounds you in ‘this is just like me and my homies talking’ and just putting you in the moment. Arranging them was really random. Actually, I have hundreds of voice messages or voice recordings with him. I just kind of randomly picked because I was just like, ‘I had 24 hours to take them, let me just randomly choose some of them,’ and these are the ones that came up, haha. They’re perfect, in my opinion, they tell the story perfectly. Just going back to the magic that was occurring, that’s another piece of that.

I would agree with you. Absolutely. That’s the album; I’m kind of interested, you’ve been touring since March, like you said. How has this been playing out on the tour? I know you’ve done tours with other very large artists and you’ve done tours, of course, yourself. How has this album that had this dichotomy and been so proud and very nonchalant in and of itself but very assured in itself as in this queer Indigenous elements- How have you been seeing it received on the road and in these new places, like you’ve been in Europe recently?

Mhm yeah, like I said, I think the lyrics have always lended to topics of land and Indigenous knowledge and that has always been really present, while also the music has always been dance music and in a way like party vibes and I think with the new songs it’s a lot more like internal and self-internalization. It’s really beautiful and interesting to see all the dualities happen in front of me. You know, people are crying for one song, and then another song they’re making out, shaking ass and grinding, so that’s like the point. The point is to come to the shows open and with your grief and just like ready to release it through dance. Ready to convert grief into joy and I think people really come with that, ready to do that. It’s been beautiful to witness.

I could not find exactly where I had seen this, I’m pretty sure I saw it on your social. But I saw that you, at one point over the last several months, had a show where maybe there was someone in the audience who was not quite receptive or was not expecting what your show was. Can you talk a little bit about that experience and what that was?

Oh, yeah. Well, that tour I was supporting Portugal The Man for that tour. They were doing a sort of small-town Midwest tour. I mean, you’ll see live, I’m just gonna be the most lesbian, most authentic, gayest version of myself and most sensual. It was a really important reminder that there are places in the world, especially in the U.S., where that’s really threatening to people, specifically men. It’s a big difference because in one world, people will sort of shake their heads and be in disgust by my own sensuality, and in another world, it will move people to tears or move people into their own sensuality and create this explosion of energy and I think they’re both important. I’m interested in being in both spaces. I’m interested in playing in front of the people who have never seen a lesbian Tejana from the border be in their sensuality and in their pleasure and I’m here to be that for the world.

I love that. Yeah, I remember seeing that and just being like, it’s unfortunate, but I mean, they got to experience something new, and I think that’s great in its own way.

Exactly. Exactly.

Of course, editor and founder of She Shreds Magazine, you do so many different projects. You open for other artists, you’re now doing this huge tour in support of Malegría. How has it been this year with this tour managing everything that you do? I think that’s where this idea of space comes in. You have created space, and you highlighted space rather for so many Latinx folks, but you haven’t stopped, you keep going. How are you it doing this year? How are you doing right now doing all of this?

I mean, it’s a huge learning process. Being on tour is no joke. It’s hard, hard work. It’s exhausting work. It’s profound, it’s a lot of processing. You’re holding a lot of energy for other people, you’re an energy worker. You’re like a therapist, but with jumping and moving a lot and I didn’t know that. This is my first time really touring like this, and I didn’t know how much it would take for my body to recover and for my spirit and my emotions to recover after every show. So I think the thing on music right now, I definitely do She Shreds, but I have to put it on pause because I think right now what people really need, and I’m interested more than anything in doing what people need. I can be the boss, I can be the editor, I can be the founder, and I can be anything I want, but I really wanna move with what people need and what people want and are asking for. That’s what I’m focused on. I’m focused on traveling and distributing the music and helping us all move through our grief that we are rightfully in through so many changes and crises in the world.

How do you learn to balance it and how, I guess very importantly, to say no to certain things at certain times?

I balance it, and it’s what I love; I think when you do what you love, even if it’s exhausting and difficult and hard, you’re gonna figure out a way to do it. It’s gonna sort of be like this recycling exhaustion, but then it’s gonna also turn into energy and pleasure, and I’m just following what feels good and learning from what doesn’t, and saying no is easy for me. It’s becoming easier and easier because I am getting to know more and more what I don’t like in this journey. I don’t necessarily care, at the end of the day, if all fails, as long as the beaches are healthy, I’m good. I’ll go to the beach.

By Antonio Villaseñor-Baca