2023-11-23 13:59:21
Nobody saw this one coming. Neither trend hunters nor fashion manufacturers hits. If just a year ago someone had prophesied that a twenty-year-old Mexican would triumph in the largest Spanish pavilions armed with only acoustic guitars, double bass and wind instruments, they would have been taken for crazy. But here is Peso Pluma (on Tuesday, at the Wizink Center in Madrid; on Wednesday night, at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona), established as an unexpected icon of the season without needing to join the infinite catalog of so-called urban music artists. that draw on pre-recorded rhythms and autotune. And opening, even so, a new path in the always capricious modernity.
Peso Pluma is the artist to watch in 2023. The one who has led the most important growth in the barometers of success in the modern world: listening on streaming platforms. streamingindustry awards, agenda of record collaborations… Therefore, the audience that attended his first Barcelona concert included local young people, many of them with roots on the other side of the Atlantic, and expats curious people who did not even understand the instructions in Spanish given by the access controllers who searched them thoroughly. The wait at the venue was livened up with songs by Yankee trap powerhouse Future and Puerto Rican reggaeton artists like Anuel AA. None warmed up the atmosphere as much as the classic salsa My lucky day by Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe included in I kill him (1973), an album on the cover of which the trombonist appeared pointing a gun at his victim’s temple.
“Soon will come / The day of my luck / I know that before my death / Surely my luck will change,” sang Héctor Lavoe. However, Featherweight’s Barcelona debut was not as great as what is said about the Madrid debut. Black curtains had to be placed to reduce the track and cover empty stands. The stage also seemed to have shrunk and moved forward a few meters to hide the lack of audience, so that the arrangement of screens caused some to cover others if viewed from the side stands. Everything in the stage setup, from the sheet that covered the stage and on which barely comprehensible images were projected from the stands, to the excessive volume of that voice in off sound for a packed venue when there were barely half of them, it suggested that the venue was too big for their first assault in Catalonia. (The promoter claims that 10,000 people attended).
An acoustic hurricane
All the responsibility for the night fell on the repertoire, the musical genre and the stages of this 24-year-old young man. “Who came to sing corridos tonight?” he shouted. And for a long time he would have to work hard with other exclamations like “where is Barcelona?” or “Up with Mexico, bastards!” because the enclosure did not light easily. Normally, his only weapons were two acoustic guitars, a double bass, a trombone and two charchetas (that wind instrument typical of Mexican music groups and much lighter than a tuba). All the musicians wandered around the stage thanks to the wireless microphone, but the one who jumped the most would be the light Featherweight. With the manner of a rapper, sweatpants and empire t-shirt like a sober Ben Yart, his millennial hyperactivity contrasted with music with such traditional roots. But that’s what corridos tumbados are: vibrant songs of love and violence performed by young people raised in the era of trap and pumped with the least predestined instrument to drive the youth of the 21st century crazy: the trombone.
To ensure the shot in the first stages of the concert, Featherweight used his carnal Jasiel Núñez, a Mexican singer living in Barcelona; He just recorded a song in which he mentions the Apolo room. Together they performed Bipolar, Lagoons and as, Pastel pink. It’s the one that says: “Of little age, but very smart / Because the truth is, I always persist / To reach great heights.” At that point of showand while the two singers evoked their businesses in Amsterdam carrying merchandise in small planes loaded like supermarkets, the Peso Pluma songbook had already established itself on its own merits.
Merits, in fact, of an overwhelming stylistic proposal thanks to the power that the two charchettas and the trombone infused at the beginning of each song (beautiful His house) and that define the very essence of the Featherweight sound. And, of those two acoustic guitars pinched with tireless nerve that form the backbone that keeps each composition firm until it concludes and gives way to the next lying corrido. Jasiel released a song that will not be published until 2024, I walk in my world, and he wanted to dedicate it “to all those who have had depression.” He performed it wearing a Barça t-shirt without the Spotify logo. Curious. The rest of the musicians wore Spotify t-shirts with Blaugrana colors, except for the double bassist, who was wearing white. Perhaps because, being the only one whose instrument prevented him from moving freely on the pitch, he played the role of the team’s rhythmic goalkeeper.
Closing the circle
In a way, Peso Pluma is the oldest young man that Mexican music has produced in recent times, because beyond the aesthetics and the language used, the lyrics of his songs close the circle that the narcocorridos began in the 70s, a subgenre even prior to the emergence of hip-hop culture in the United States. The influence of rap, trap and even reggaeton is undeniable in their way of dressing and rhyming, but when they talk about the drug business they do not need to look for references in Yankee rappers. In his country he has a good school of lyricists and a more than credible context from which to draw inspiration. Mexico had its gangster rap long before gangsta rap was invented in Los Angeles.
Peso Pluma dedicated a block of the concert to this theme, with titles such as The war (his first role of success, back in 2019), The Hawk (portrait of an imaginary lieutenant under the orders of the narco Chapo Guzman), The Sparrowhawk II (in which his henchmen patrol listening to rap and “if the order is to kill, that is not questioned”) or La People, where he precisely describes the look of the gunmen (Dior boots and Scar rifles) while highlighting their submission to the Sinaloa cartel (“the flag here is still a Guzmán, I emphasize it again”). For all these reasons, Peso Pluma received death threats signed by the rival Jalisco cartel in September, which forced him to suspend several performances in Mexico. Also in this sense, Peso Pluma is a new chapter (and not a full stop) in the conflictive union of narcocorridos.
From some political establishments in Mexico, speeches have been launched in favor of prohibiting the dissemination of narco-themed corridos tumbados. Even President López Obrador has harshly criticized their glorification of violence, although he is not in favor of censoring them. At the Palau Sant Jordi, the closest thing to silencing his speeches was the sound blackout that affected the final stretch of The blue, one of the most chanted narcocorridos of the night. The musicians barely knew what was happening, but suddenly the music only reached the audience in the first rows. And, of course, it didn’t take long for complaints to come from the stands shouting: “You can’t hear it! “You can’t hear it!”
Reggaetons and kisses
Peso Pluma’s collaboration schedule is so tight that the concert could not ignore his other reggaeton life, so he sent the musicians to catch their breath and he was left alone on stage to star in a brief set singing over the pre-recorded tracks. Two fragments of canned sound Plebada y Burn, their respective alliances with El Alfa and Ryan Castro. The thunderous volume made them high moments of the evening. Immediately afterwards he attacked, already with the band on stage, his recording with Bizarrap. And since he was musically in Argentina, the next to appear on stage was his current partner, Rosario singer Nicki Nicole. Together they performed ‘At Night’ and to show that at least this song is based on real events, they kissed several times to the joy of tiktokers, instagramers and other hunters of exclusive ephemera of the 21st century.
The atmosphere was warm. Featherweight and its plebada of musicians had achieved the impossible: maintaining the tension for more than an hour and a half of the concert with their frenetic and beefy acoustic instruments. They rang and PRC, a pair of lying corridos recorded with the pioneer of the genre: Natanael Cano. He rolled a cigarette in the stands. There was a fight on the court. And both were chanted as if they were Mexican national anthems. Better said, as unofficial hymns of AMG a sector of the nation that lives outside the system. Or, better yet, as unofficial anthems of a public that assumes narratives that evoke very real situations as fiction and entertainment.
The Mexican flag occupied the central screen of the stage shortly before the song that the entire audience was waiting for played.: She dances Alone. It is the most popular corrido in his repertoire, the pinnacle of a genre whose origins must be traced back almost half a century. And he didn’t even use it as a closing for the concert. After almost two hours, that honor fell to Lady Gaga, another of his odes to luxury, drugs and sex: Dom Perignon, pink powder, Lamborginis, Mercedes, Cartier, fresh seafood, yachts and Louis Vuitton. All rhymed with flow bastard. And with wonderful backing of the trombone.
For some time now, the thousands of cell phones turned on in a dark room had created an optical effect of absolute full house. It wasn’t like that at all. But Featherweight left Sant Jordi with an indisputable feeling of victory. His songbook is punchy and his elasticity and consistency as a performer allowed him to more than endure the wear and tear of such a long and demanding concert. Not only did he defend his candidacy as a long-term artist. He also took on the challenge of, were his verbatim farewell words: “Represent our roots and our fucking Mexican flag.” With its lights and shadows. Good luck with that.
#Featherweight #star #coming