Sandra Calixto had in mind to form a group of women who would perform sierreña music, a Mexican genre that to date is dominated by men.
One day, Sandra met Ashlee Valenzuela through Instagram and asked her to create a group. Ashlee said yes, and invited Sandra, who lived in Dallas, to go to Arizona to start the adventure.
“I thought he wasn’t going to come,” Ashlee said. “And come on yes; I respect her because she came [a Arizona]. The three of us are very united in this dream.”
That dream is Conexión Divina, the group that these two girls, together with Liz Trujillo –whom the other two met on Tiktok–, want to turn into the first of women who interpret sierreño, an original genre from the Sinaloa mountains that is now performed by popular corrido singers. The sharp and fast chords of the guitar are its main characteristic.
For now, the trio promotes “Hate”, a song that Ashlee wrote and dedicated to a “love that almost was”.
“I had a very high ego,” he said. “But on that occasion they ignored me; It was something that had never happened to me.”
This song will be part of the EP that the trio is preparing. They all play guitar and Liz is on vocals. Ashlee found her on Tiktok and loved her thick, strong voice, “like Ana Gabriel’s”. Liz used to upload covers without showing her face.
“What we liked was his voice,” he said. “We didn’t care what she was like, her voice was what we loved.”
Liz is originally from Los Angeles; she grew up in the South Central part of the city, an area where the majority of its inhabitants are Latino and black. She just graduated from high school and just a few weeks ago she turned 18 years old. Sandra is 19 years old and Ashlee is 22. All three, except Ashlee, who studied for three months at an academy, learned to play the guitar from YouTube tutorials.
These young women, along with artists like Yahritza y Su Esencia and Iván Cornejo, are part of Generation Z, a generation that seems determined to make its mark.