Mexico City, Jul 11 (EFE).- Today’s musical panorama makes this the right time to experiment, according to the Mexican group Reik, currently immersed in a concert tour featuring its latest disc, “Des/Amor,” which is taking advantage of the worldwide rage for Latin music.
“It’s fantastic to be able to allow yourself as an artist to experiment and grow, because people grow, we mature and our restlessness is driven in new directions,” the guitarist of the pop band, Julio Ramirez, told EFE in an interview.
Since its start in 2003, he said, the group that also includes Jesus Navarro and Gilberto “Bibi” Marin, was already jumping from one genre to another, though its musicians were often admonished not to take so many risks but to stick with “the formula that works.”
However, “we now see a global acceptance of experimentation,” said the acoustic guitar star, who mentioned folk and reggae among the multiple influences they absorbed for the recording of “Des/Amor,” launched last year.
Among the categories they explored to enrich this work was urban music, an intrusion that surprised even their own experimental natures, and which took shape with the version of “Ya Me Entere,” recorded with reggaeton singer/songwriter Nicky Jam.
The Reik group comes from the border state of Baja California, specifically from the city of Mexicali, across the border from Calexico, so its musicians have lived among a mix of English and Spanish since they were tots.
From that cultural merger was born one of the singles on their latest disc, “Spanglish,” whose verses alternate the two languages, something totally unthinkable just two years ago.
“Spanglish used to be harshly criticized, it was looked down on. Now we see it accepted as very cool,” Ramirez said.