The internet’s princess of regional Mexican music is coming to town.
Ángela Aguilar is kicking off her Piensa En Mi tour on June 2 at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre.
The 19-year-old knows that her last name carries with it a musical legacy. After all, she’s the daughter of legendary singer Pepe Aguilar, born while her mother accompanied him on tour in Mexico in 2003.
Now as the third generation of Mexican mariachi and ranchera singers, Aguilar is a part of one of Mexico’s most famous “royal” families, led by her grandparents Antonio Aguilar and Flor Silvestre.
She doesn’t let that go to her head, though — even with a doll created in her likeness.
“I’m just starting out and I have a long way to go,” she said in an interview with the Sun-Times. “Being third generation means that probably everything that you’re going to do, they have already done.”
Aguilar says that she recognizes the importance of maintaining her family’s musical traditions.
“I grew up with typical classical songs because my parents showed them to me. And I don’t want that music to die. I want it to continue living and I want people to continue to appreciate it. Because, in my opinion, it’s one of the most beautiful musics in the world.”
When she was just three years old, Aguilar joined her father onstage during one of his tours. She sang into a microphone and her music career was born. At nine years old, she and her older brother Leonardo split the work on an EP produced by their dad. By her tenth birthday, she dropped her first Christmas album, “Navidad con Ángela Aguilar.”
In an industry dominated by men, Aguilar is helping make way for a new generation of women in traditional Mexican music. From a young age she’d already seen her fair share of discrimination.
“Interviewers would ask who did my dresses or why I chose to wear that dress. And for [my brother], they would ask him who his idols were in the music industry and where he wanted to go,” she said. “I could tell the difference that gender made [based] on the questions that I was asked. You have to work three times as hard to get the same recognition that a man gets.”
Aguilar added that it’s “insane” that she’s one of the few Mexican women singers headlining a U.S. tour this year. She hopes that her career will make way for more “representation of women in these situations of power” as well as other less-connected artists.
She’s excited to be kicking off her tour in Chicago, home to a direct Greyhound bus route to the Mexican state of Zacatecas, where her grandfather was born in 1919. It’s a route thousands of proud Zacatecanos have taken over the years to call Chicago home.
“You can imagine how many people from the town are [in Chicago],” she said. “And every time I go, it feels like home.
“... I feel like Chicago is one of those places that really honors Mexican traditions,” she continued. The city is home to hundreds of thousands of people with Mexican heritage, and is a culinary haven when it comes to regional dishes.
While on tour she’ll perform several songs off her upcoming album “Piensa En Mi,” due this month. The album will consist of “boleros,” a genre comprised of love songs that was hugely popular in 19th century Cuba.
She’ll also be dropping a collaboration with American DJ Steve Aoki on June 15.
“I love my culture and I love my traditions. I’ve been singing this music since I was really, really little. But there is no reason why I could not explore [outside] of this genre,” she said. “But the only thing that I’m going to say is that I will never stop singing Mexican music. I’m 19 and I’d like to see what else is out there.”
The Piensa En Mi Tour is going to be “astronomically” different from the one she’s grown up doing with her family. The multigenerational, family-friendly showcase, Jaripeo Sin Fronteras, is an arena tour led by her father that started back in 2017. Aguilar says that it’s “like a Mexican-American circus” complete with a rodeo, bullfighting, acrobatics and lots of special effects and pyrotechnics.
Ángela and Leonardo will join their father in August for the 2023 edition of the Jaripeo Sin Fronteras tour at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont.
