A run of Harry Potter, Hammer by Dani Flow converted into a bolero “that your grandmother can listen to” and a new version of the old iron. Fernando de Ita (Guadalajara, 29 years old) began to show off his musical skills on TikTok with funny covers and songs. His music broke the algorithm of the Chinese social network. In March 2022 he uploaded his first video, by April he already had an offer with a brand that took a couple of months to come together and in those two months El HueyCoyote, the name with which he baptized his musical project, tripled his numbers on social networks. and I had to add a zero to the offer,” he comments with a laugh, under a roof that protects from the drizzle in the Coyoacán Nurseries. He doesn’t like being referred to as Fernando, “that’s the old man’s name,” he jokes, referring to his father. He prefers Coyote. “Even my mother calls me that now.”
“More than a project, it is a continuous inspiration [que realizo] with honor, with great respect for the written word and creativity,” he says when talking about how HueyCoyote was born. At the age of eight he studied violin and classical music. He left because the school environment, coming from Russia, was very hard. “I ended up hating and not wanting to know anything about music anymore.” It was then that the alter ego. “I am 5% Fernando and 95% HueyCoyote; Fernando was a child who suffered a lot of bullying, a lot bullying. Coyote came to hug me and tell me: ‘come, calm down. Everything’s fine”.
He rediscovered music when he was a teenager. At the age of 16 he moved to the State of Hidalgo to study classical guitar and “I discovered Calle 13 when they were collaborating with Rubén Blades, Seun Kuti, Totó la Monposina and I said: ‘wow, this exists,’” he recalls. “I became very interested in native cultures. I have a deep love for Totonacapan, a culture that is still alive, especially in Veracruz; it is alive and latent there,” she says.
Exposed to this new world, Coyote was musically conflicted again. “Being a staunch student of classical music, I don’t understand why they taught me Dmitri Shostakovich instead of Etelvina Maldonado when I am closer to Colombia than Russia.” He began to immerse himself in the music close to him “and everything changed when he discovered trough dance.” An Afro-Mexican dance that occurs on the small coast of Guerrero and Oaxaca. Coyote explains that the dance is done on a platform “and legend has it that it began because the mestizos turned the rafts upside down and tapped on them. “It seems to me to be the most punk act that exists.”
Coyote also headed towards punk. Not with guitar bangs, or shouts of anarchy. Yes, with short melodies and mixing genres that are perhaps discussed as a joke, in the middle of the night, under the influence of alcohol and seem implausible. But, HueyCoyote showed that the corrido tumbado also goes well with a fictional character or that the lyrics that characterize reggaeton, generally vulgar, can be dedicated in a romantic bolero, and that the best way to start your musical career is with a minute of melody and a video on social networks; There is no longer a need to knock on the door of the major labels and hope that an executive likes your bet.
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