After bringing a full mariachi band onstage last year at Austin City Limits, the first Mexican singer to do so in the festival’s two decades, Lesly Reynaga wants to keep thinking big. Her recent debut at another fest by local C3 Presents, Lollapalooza, was a similar major feat: A 12-piece student mariachi ensemble and a folklórico dancer trio from Northwestern University quite literally kicked off the weekend. She warmed up audiences with the romping sounds of brass instruments and deep-bodied acoustic guitars.
“It’s just such a cool opportunity for the students to get to a stage of that magnitude,” she shares over an early morning phone call.
Earlier this month, the singer-songwriter and guitarist released her debut album, Valerosa, a deep, memoirlike expedition into the nuances of duality and an artist reexamining her roots. Twelve tracks delve into heartbreak and loss, cultural pride, and complex traditions. Reynaga ultimately reaches for empowerment, not only as a woman in the male-dominated world of mariachi, but as a Mexican American immigrant eager to find a hopeful sense of place in the increasingly hostile American landscape.
“Mariachi music is such a big part of my soul and my identity, but on the other hand, I’ve always loved contemporary pop music.” – Lesly Reynaga
Reynaga was born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico. When she was 6 years old, her father moved to the Rio Grande Valley while Reynaga and her siblings remained in their hometown with their mother. Among 11 maternal aunts and uncles, the artist learned the power of group performance early on.
“My abuelito had a rancho outside of the city and we would gather there every Sunday,” Reynaga says. “It was one of those things where everyone came together in a circle and brought out whatever instruments were there. If there wasn’t a real instrument, you’d grab whatever was lying around and make it into one – a big water jug, buckets, playing a guacharaca using a cheese grater, anything. I always stayed close to music through my family.”
At home, Reynaga tuned into everything from Eighties pop to the old-school ranchera and mariachi songs of icons like Rocío Dúrcal and Vicente Fernández. She began singing in kindergarten after learning the traditional polka “Atotonilco” from her grandmother’s old songbook and went on to perform it at school festivals and assemblies. As a child of the Nineties, she also often had the CDs of pop powerhouses like Christina Aguilera and Shania Twain in heavy rotation.
At age 16, she reunited with her father in McAllen, Texas, and enrolled in a classical guitar class at James Nikki Rowe High School. Here, she met Juan Castillo, director of the school’s mariachi ensemble, who promptly encouraged her to join as a vocalist.
“I went after school to try out, and I have been singing mariachi ever since,” she says.
Pulling inspiration from groundbreaking Mexican singer-songwriters like Linda Ronstadt and the inimitable late Juan Gabriel, Reynaga reveals her pop-oriented and experimental intuitions throughout Valerosa. Alongside the spellbound “Me Mata,” she stretches stony vocals across booming electronics in “Rayo” and moves through the wreckage in the standing-ovation-worthy piano ballad “No Me Digas.”
“When I recorded [Valerosa], I wanted to find a way to bring these influences together. Mariachi music is such a big part of my soul and my identity, but on the other hand, I’ve always loved contemporary pop music,” she says.
Two years after graduating high school in the Valley, Reynaga sought out a sense of community in a bigger city. Following the suggestion of a tía and cousin in Round Rock, Reynaga relocated to Central Texas for college, where she studied public relations at UT-Austin. She made her local musical debut as a featured soloist with the Mariachi Paredes de Tejastitlán ensemble.
The singer-songwriter worked on Valerosa with an Austin production team of Nate Villegas, Andrew Schindler, and Nick Clark, who has played bass for Kanye West and Jon Batiste. Reynaga found a kindred spirit in Clark, whose work as a producer and musician often bridges the gap from traditional – jazz, blues, gospel – to current pop and hip-hop. When she first mentioned interest in outfitting folkloric song structures with some pop heft, Clark immediately hopped on board.
“Even though it’s simple and straightforward to take a traditional mariachi song and put a pop beat behind it and call it modern, that would be veering away from the traditional components of the music,” says Clark. “We did our best to understand the nuances and create with them in mind. The more you understand that these small nuances exist, the more humility you treat the unknown with, and that leads to a more vulnerable and honest space for honest collaboration [and] infusion.”
He adds: “I still wouldn’t call myself an expert, but I definitely have developed a new respect for this music.”
In one of the record’s most shining moments, “No Me Despido,” Reynaga animates an all-too-relatable reality for immigrants seeking refuge across the United States. She cuts through lone, chugging guitar strums with heart-wrenching, folkloric-style prose and soul-stirring vocals: “Me voy y no me despido/ Porque voy buscando hallar cosas que nunca he tenido/ Y no puedo fallar/ Ilusiones de un futuro/ Vida en un lugar seguro.” (“I leave without saying goodbye/ Because I go searching to find things I’ve never had/ And I can’t fail/ Hoping for a better future/ A life in a safe place.“)
“The whole song has this huapango guitar behind it. To me, there’s no better musical genre,” she says. “That’s where Linda Ronstadt did it right, playing ‘La Cigarra.’ That was one of my biggest influences, her rendition of that song. Musically, that was connected – the sadness of the memories and things you leave behind, but also that optimism we have to carry with us to survive.”
As corrido megastars like Peso Pluma and Texas’ own norteño sextet Grupo Frontera smash streaming records, música Mexicana continues to grow in popularity among non-Latino audiences both in and outside of the U.S. With bilingual buzz around the meteoric rise of Gen Z acts like all-women trio Conexión Divina and sierreño balladeer DannyLux, mariachi’s moment in the spotlight is still overdue.
“I would love for mariachi music to be considered as something that is not old and a thing of the past, but as timeless. It’s very much part of our identity,” Reynaga muses. “I’m just one more person bringing it to the forefront, and hopefully, it’s in a way that will make sense musically for newer generations so it’s something that they can be proud of. Not necessarily because of the topics in [Valerosa], but because the music and culture of Mexican and Mexican American people is often put to the side.”
Lesly Reynaga celebrates HAAM Day at Fareground Austin on Sept. 19 before taking the stage at C3 Presents’ FORMAT Festival in Arkansas. Following her Valerosa release show on Sept. 30 at the Long Center’s Rollins Studio Theatre, she plays KUTX’s Rock the Park on Oct. 27 at Mueller Lake Park.
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This article appears in September 1 • 2023.