In May 2020 the ravine I had a concert scheduled Metropolitan Theater From Mexico City. The idea was to celebrate 25 years of career, but the pandemic went through and everything changed. Two years later, the group led by Jose Manuel Aguilera picked up that old presentation and rescheduled it for the September 3 in the same venue.
In what is anticipated to be a night of special guests, rock and good music, Aguilera acknowledges hunger for the stage. “I am excited, I think that as a result of the pandemic I relearned to value conversation with people. I don’t know if the public changed or I changed, but when I came back I noticed a very special affection from the people towards the band”.
Formed in 1995 by Federico Fong and José Manuel Aguilera, La Barranca was born as a group willing to take risks and take Mexican rock to levels not seen before. Since then and to date they have released more than ten albums, the most recent in the mist (2020), and has seen members like Alonso Arreola, Alfonso Andre y Alejandro Otaola, among others. “Over the years we have left many things on the way, but above all I think we left a very vast repertoire of songs”.
As with all good bands, the band’s reach is measured on stage. It’s 27 years there are good, bad and worse concerts. “Our first festivals in Monterrey were a disaster. We didn’t have the right technical conditions,” recalls Aguilera. To her credit, she underlines her latest performance in Guadalajara. “We gave it before the pandemic and I might say it was almost perfect.”
After passing through Sangre Asteka y caifans, the musician has found his most lasting project in La Barranca. He affirms that if there is a constant in his work, it is not to stagnate. “Unless you get into a jar of formalin and want to do the same thing for thirty years, the relationship with music changes. I would like to believe that now I have a better perspective and that I have learned how to produce and record the songs. For me, making music is an artistic matter but also a job”.
Oblivious to any exercise of nostalgia, Aguilera warns that he does not return to his previous albums unless it is for a concert as important as the one at the Metropolitan. “During the recording process, you listen to the album so many times that once it’s finished, the last thing you want is to hear it once more. However, there are times like now when we seek to make a retrospective which involved listening to some of the old material to find our most representative songs and locate which ones can sound what the group is today. I’m not interested in doing an act of vile nostalgia, but to show that the band is alive and that we continue to do things in the present and in the future. For me the nature of a creative musician is to make new and different songs”.
