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Back in April, Yahritza Martínez contributed to 60-plus years of Chicano history when she became the youngest Latin artist to appear on Billboard's Hot 100 chart at age 15. The Mexican-American singer broke the record that was once held by "La Bamba" crooner Ritchie Valens. While Valens put a Latin twist on rock music, Yahritza also did it her way with her sentimental sierreño ballad that put a youthful spin on age-old regional Mexican music.
"It's just unbelievable," Yahritza tells Teen Vogue over the phone while on a break from her high school classes. "I feel very proud of myself and my brothers for making this happen." Her band Yahritza y Su Esencia, with her older siblings Jairo and Mondo, is part of a new wave of teens on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border who are redefining regional Mexican music for a new generation.
Nearly a decade ago, sierreño music was first popularized by Mexican singer Ariel Camacho in 2014. The guitar-driven subgenre gave regional Mexican music a more youthful and electric feel. Though Camacho's reign was short-lived when he died at age 22 in a car accident a year later, his lasting influence inspired a movement of kids like Natanael Cano to pick up their guitars. The Hermosillo, Sonora, native went even more against grain to forge his own path in the genre.
Natanael moved to L.A. in 2019 when he signed with Rancho Humilde. His swaggering songs reflected his reality in between both countries, a unique blend of Mexican corridos with a trap music flow. Natanael coined the new genre as “corridos tumbados.” The then 18-year-old amassed over 162 million views on YouTube with his breakthrough hit "El Drip." His follow-up, the fiery "Soy El Diablo," caught the attention of Bad Bunny, who jumped on the remix. "¡Viva México!" Bad Bunny shouted in the song.
"I believe no one had ever heard something like what we did," Natanael reflects in Spanish over Zoom. "[Bad Bunny] liked the song so much. It was very important that artists like Bad Bunny have supported the movement since the beginning."
With TikTok booming the following year at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many more teens followed Natanael's lead and better connected with their peers on the platform. Among them was Bay Area-based group Eslabón Armado, who made a mark with their emo-infused sierreño ballads that reflected singer Pedro Tovar's bicultural upbringing. "Everyone was on TikTok," Pedro recalls over Zoom. "Our songs just blew up with people being in quarantine." The music video for their dark love song "Con Tus Besos" surpassed 139 million views on YouTube. "My life changed a lot. I wasn't playing backyard parties anymore. I wasn't doing quinceañeras," he adds.
Following in Eslabón Armado's footsteps last year was Riverside, California, native Ivan Cornejo. His take on the Mexican corrido is captivating with an alternative rock influence. Over the phone, he cites Tame Impala and "old bands" like The Strokes, Nirvana, and Radiohead as inspirations. Ivan wrote his breakthrough hit "Está Dañada," about a girl he was seeing at the time. Before he finished it, they had broken up. "It was going to be a love song, but I ended up making it into a sad love song," he says. On Spotify, the track amassed over 132 million streams, and it later caught the attention of Bad Bunny collaborator Jhayco, who jumped on the remix. “I felt really blessed that I had one of my favorite artists on one of my favorite songs.”
Speaking about the teens connecting to his music, Ivan says, "I feel like right now those times are when they're going through their first love, their first heartbreak, their first relationship. I feel like right now they're going through so many emotions. I feel like my songs have a lot of emotions and they just relate so much with the lyrics."
Now Yahritza y Su Esencia is breaking through as a female voice in the genre. After teasing her song "Soy El Unico" on TikTok, she released it through Lumbre Music in late March. The following week, her heartfelt serenade debuted at No. 20 on the all-genre Hot 100 chart, making Yahritza the youngest Latin artist to appear on the chart. "We also feel that we did change the movement a bit because it's a girl singing and that's pretty rare for people to expect a girl singing this type of music," her brother and bandmate Mando says. About Yahritza's androgynous style, he adds, "She dresses how she wants to dress and I feel like a lot of people like that authenticity. She's just being herself. She just does whatever she wants to do."
Speaking to her success, Yahritza says, "I feel happy because I'm inspiring other women as well. Not just women, but other kids as well, everybody. I just feel like when they see someone young, they get inspired by it too, and they want to do it as well."
More women to watch for in the new wave of regional Mexican music include Ivonne Galaz, who is from Natanael's state of Sonora. He actually helped get Ivonne onboard at Rancho Humilde when he recorded the song she wrote, "Golpes De La Vida," as a duet with her. Sarah "La Morena" Palafox is also making waves as a Black female voice in the genre. She was born in Southern California but raised in Zacatecas, Mexico, by her foster family. She breathes new soul into classics like Vicente Fernández's "Volver Volver" and Juan Gabriel's "Amor Eterno."
This month, Conexión Divina made their debut as the first Gen-Z, all-women sierreño group. The trio is comprised of lead singer Liz Trujillo and her bandmates Ashlee Valenzuela and Sandra Calixto. "I feel like women are more sentimental with their music," Liz says over Zoom. "Since it's more of a masculine-dominated industry, we give more of that feminine touch, that sentimental value." Sandra adds, "Because women can do anything, you know, the same like guys." In the music video for the soaring "Odio," Liz and Ashlee are caught up in a love triangle that includes both women and men. They're bringing queer representation to the genre, with Liz identifying as gay and Ashlee as bisexual.
"We're showing a different side to women. That women are just not like this or that, so that everyone can connect," Ashlee says. "We definitely wanted to have some sort of representation of ourselves," Liz adds.
Eslabón Armado made history soon after Yahritza y Su Esencia in May. When the band's latest album, Nostalgia, debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard 200, it became the first regional Mexican music album to appear in the top 10 of the chart. Conejo's latest LP, Dañado, has become the second biggest Latin album of the year, behind Bad Bunny's Un Verano Sin Ti. In April, Natanael brought corridos tumbados to its biggest stage yet at Coachella.
All of the regional Mexican subgenres mentioned here are rooted in corridos. These storytelling songs were born on the ranches of Mexico in the 1800s where the people celebrated their triumphs, offered cautionary tales of their pitfalls, or mended a broken heart through music. This enduring form of Mexican expression is now being reclaimed by teens who are telling new stories and redefining what it means to be Mexican or Chicano in 2022. More women and folks in the LGBTQ+ community are finding their voices in corridos that were long dominated by men and the toxic masculinity of machismo. Men are becoming more open to singing about their feelings and wearing their hearts on their sleeves. Because of that generation shift, regional Mexican music is reverberating among younger listeners who have appointed new ambassadors their age to proudly carry the torch of the genre while challenging old traditions.
Natanael reflects now on his Coachella show, the crowds of people, the impact of the moment in the California desert. “Let's see if we keep working hard,” he says, “[so] that soon we'll be singing corridos in more foreign places that we can't even imagine."
