MEXICO CITY (AP) — Madonna concluded a week of spectacular concerts in Mexico City with an evening in which she had Salma Hayek as a special guest and in which emotions abounded, from love and gratitude to pain and the memory of their loved ones who perished from HIV-AIDS.
Since he announced that he would come to Mexico in April 2023, expectations were at their highest. Then came the near-fatal accident he suffered in June of that year due to a bacterial infection, which put his world tour in doubt. Until he finally recovered and resumed his Celebration Tour to celebrate four decades of career.
The tickets for her five concerts at the Palacio de los Deportes in the Mexican capital, with capacity for 20,000 attendees, were sold out by April 2024 when the queen of pop finally arrived after eight years of absence and more than 30 years since her first concerts. in the country on that Girls Show Tour in 1993.
Madonna took plenty of time to talk to her fans throughout the presentation in which she performed songs like “Like a Prayer,” “Into the Groove,” “Ray of Light,” and “Don’t Tell Me.”
First she expressed the importance of music in her life since she arrived in New York to be a dancer with “35 dollars in the bag.”
“I was very innocent, I was really stupid, but you know what I don’t regret any of the decisions I made, all the stupid decisions too, because they led me to where I am today and I wouldn’t change anything,” she said. “My life took a 360 degree turn when someone gave me a guitar and said, learn to play this and I did. Performing music changed my life, I hope my music changes yours.”
Madonna recalled that when she composed her first song, she spoke excitedly to her father to tell him about her achievement, but he asked her if she had already gotten a job, “guess who pays that (expletive) rent now!” she exclaimed.
At that time, Madonna was not put off by that comment from her father, her job was music and she premiered this first song in a small stinky place called CBGB (the legendary cradle of the New York punk scene), the song was “Burning Up.” , which he performed after this introduction.
During the week in Mexico, Madonna had also shared that when she was a girl living in the Midwest of the United States, she discovered Frida Kahlo and went to the only art museum that existed at that time in Detroit where she found a portrait of the Mexican painter with braided hair and an intense look.
Kahlo gave her hope of feeling integrated, of being authentic, to the point of considering her her “soul mate, internal muse, mother, spiritual animal, everything.”
And for her last concert, Kahlo was allowed to be present thanks to the costume that Hayek chose to participate in the dance competition of her hit “Vogue” in which Madonna has had guests such as Ricky Martin, Wendy Guevara and Alberto Guerra.
Hayek, who in 2002 starred in the film “Frida,” based on the life of the famous Mexican painter, unleashed euphoria at the Palacio de los Deportes by taking to the catwalk in a modernized version of the typical Tehuana dress that Kahlo used to wear. with a skirt with Mexican embroidery, combined with a black corset with transparencies, as well as braided hair decorated with flowers.
Madonna and Hayek gave each other a long hug and rated the dancers, among whom was one of Madonna’s daughters, Estere, to whom Hayek gave a 10. The divas shouted “Long live Mexico bastards!”
Other children of Madonna participated in the show: David Banda played the guitar on several songs and Mercy James the piano for “Bad Girl” on the night in which they were accompanied by about twenty dancers and in which they performed several changes of dance. costumes that reflected Madonna’s styles throughout the years.
On her tour, Madonna has performed “Live to Tell” to pay tribute to “all the bright lights we lost to AIDS”, among the photographs she has included in this tribute there are artists such as Freddy Mercury, Keith Haring and Cookie Mueller.
But that was not all, much later in the concert, after songs like “Erotica”, “Justify My Love” and “Mother and Father” he addressed the audience again.
Madonna spoke for about 10 minutes about what loss and death have meant in her life, from the death of her mother from cancer when she was five, to the deaths of countless friends during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s. , until the death of the mothers of her adopted children, also due to this autoimmune disease and the deaths, from other causes, of contemporary stars such as Michael Jackson and Prince.
“The first time I came to Mexico was to find medicine and cures, something to save my friends who were dying of AIDS, because people didn’t care,” he said. “That’s when I said I was going to fight for the rights of people who don’t have a voice until the day I die.”
“It is important to understand that we are lucky, very lucky, to be alive, to have each other… death is everywhere and despite that, despite that, this is a celebration, we celebrate life, love ”, he added before asking the audience to turn on the lights on their cell phones to perform “Express Yourself” in an acoustic version.
Madonna’s next stop will be a massive free concert on May 4 in Rio de Janeiro for which even millions of spectators are expected to attend. It has been speculated that this could be Madonna’s last tour.
All that remains is to hope that the fire that has kept her walking continues to burn.
