SXSW, the Austin, TX festival known for being a confluence of the new and cutting-edge kicked off last week and this year features a showcase featuring several of the fresh faces elevating classic Latino and regional styles of music like cumbia and a new style of corridos.
The festival is unique from other festivals in that it has combined and given space to the future. It focuses on the up and coming, and the new fusions that will be the big music of tomorrow. This showcase- brought together by Fono and Universal Music Mexico- is comprised of various artists including La Coreañera, Moreno X4, Danny Felix, La Nueva Ola de Cumbia, and Vivir Quintana.
These artists are different but share all share something: while their catalogs are relatively small being new artists, they all have a long resumé in regional Mexican music and cumbias.
More-so, their unique blends and fusions of the genres they represent and work with have turned in new sounds altogether. They keep the classic fresh. They clash the modern with the vintage. Their music is danceable and nostalgic.
In a couple of interviews with Con Safos, Moreno X4 and La Coreañera discuss what this showcase and its platform mean to them as well as what their brand new sounds are and how they developed over their careers.
Abigail Pak, La Coreañera, is South Korean Texas-born artist that now lives in Mexico City. Her music as she herself describes is reflection of her multicultural background. The sounds, the sizzle, the food, and the different communities she grew up in and between of were the integral building blocks of her career and music.
Her love of cumbia clashed with her training in classical music and turned into La Coreañera, a project that makes precise music that is nothing if not fun. It follows the classic cumbia rhythm and clashes with a classical training and with the accordion and more.
She explained what being part of this large Texas-based festival meant originally being from San Antonio, TX: “For me, returning to a place like the United States, especially a state like Texas that is such a multicultural zone is so important. I grew up in a space with migrants, my parents are from South Korea. I grew up in a mix of everything, Spanish, Korean, English, different foods, so I feel like those experiences in which I grew up with make me, the person I am today, and my musical project. To take my music to the place that formed, where I grew up, is very symbolic.”
Regresar y volver a un lugar que para mí es muy importante, que es Estados Unidos, es específicamente el estado de Texas, que es una zona de mucha multi-culturalidad. Yo crecí en una zona de migrantes, mis papás también son de Corea del Sur. Y crecí con una mezcla de todo, de español, de coreano, de inglés, de diferentes comidas, entonces yo siento que esas experiencias con las que yo crecí me hacen, pues la persona que soy hoy en día, mi proyecto musical. Y llevar mi proyecto musical a ese lugar donde yo me formé, donde me criaron, es algo muy simbólico.” -La Coreañera
And listening to her music reflects this. Not all cumbia is the same; a genre defined by a set pace and beat has so many facets and faces precisely because of the people who make it.
She explains “cumbia is something organic and natural to me. And it’s given me friendships, family, and a lot of blessings in the things that I love and that I’m passionate about, which are dancing and sharing those beautiful moments with the people one loves. That’s how I arrived at this genre.”
Jesús Moreno, who goes by Moreno X4 and is a member of Grupo Diez 4tro, is performing in this showcase after having recently launched his solo career. He’s originally from Salt Lake City, UT and now live in California in Sacramento. His unique flavor of corridos is a result of his binationality. It mixes the narrative and musical long form of corridos and soaks it in the faster and electronic textures and pace of trap.
The end product ofthe fusion is “drilla corridos”. As he defines his music, he elaborated saying “Drilla Corridos are a combination of regional instruments and urban sounds and it is defined by the form that the regional instrument play, aggressively, and by the lyrics or themes that are used which are explicit.”
Bringing this new form of music to a stage at SXSW is about connecting to a new community and reaching a new level in his career he said.
“For me, it signifies a huge accomplishment. Why? Because it’s af estival, not a show at a club or something smaller, it’s something larger. And it’s important to me because I’ve releasing this type of music for than five years now. And now, for the first time, I can sing and perform in front of a lot of people. So for me it’s everything; it’s an accomplishment, another one amongst many goals I’m achieving. It means the world to me, and for my family,” he said.
For both La Coreañera and Moreno X4 this performance is a much an opportunity to bring their unique sounds and budding stardoms to a large festival crowd as it is a chance to connect to new and old fans and community.
Moreno X4 said “what I want to convey to the people of SXSW, is to connect them with my music…something to make them yell, jump.”
La Coreañera added, “I’m excited because I feel like there’s something about playing for the people that maybe they understand a part of me that other people outside of that specific zone, right, of Texas or border towns, maybe they don’t see the same type of nuances in my project, right?
And so I think my project, La Coreañera, has a lot to say about relevant topics that are understood in a different way in the U.S. than they are here in Mexico. Which is why I’m very excited to play for my people, right? People that grew up where I grew up, people that have experienced the same type of fusion of cultures and of languages or people who come from immigrant families, right? And so I’m very excited about that because I think it’s the first time I’m playing in a public like this. I’m excited because I feel like maybe I can relate to my crowd even more.”
One showcase at one festival, but both of these artists have their hopes and goals for the event. Moreno X4 conveyed what he’s excited for most about SXSW.
“I hope to be able to spend time with the other artists present their. I also want to connect to the fans that after so much time, connecting with them is the most important, the coolest thing about all of this because they give you all the excitement about this. It’s like they lift you up, they hype you up. So connecting with them is the beautiful part about being at SXSW.”
“Espero poder convivir con todos los artistas que van a estar presentes ahí. Espero también conectar con la gente después de tanto tiempo, poder conectar con ellos, que para mí la verdad es lo más importante, lo más chido de todo esto. Pueden conectar con el público porque ellos te dan ese ánimo. Es como una carga que te dan como que te dan para arriba, te dan un recharge. Entonces poder conectar con ellos para mí es algo muy bonito y al igual estar en el South by Southwest. Es una gran oportunidad en mi carrera después de tanto tiempo de no poder estar en un escenario y poder conectar con mi gente. Ahora sí se pudo y no nada más en cualquier evento, sino que un festival que se titula South by Southwest. Todos sabemos algo muy importante y todo el mundo va a estar ahí. Y listo para convertir con esa gente. Eso es lo que yo estoy esperando honestamente.” -Moreno X4
The showcase takes place today at 8:00 PM Central in Austin, TX on the final day of SXSW at Mala Fama.
By Antonio Villaseñor-Baca