Tired of working for months on an album that no one would listen to, he opted to compose shorter songs with funny lyrics about what he saw on social media. Success came to him in a month
A Harry Potter corrido, Dani Flow’s Martillazo turned into a bolero “that your grandmother can listen to” and a new version of Fierro Viejo. Fernando de Ita (Guadalajara, 29 years old) began to show off his musical talents 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 says with a laugh, under a roof that protects from the drizzle in the Viveros de Coyoacán. 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 [that I carry out] with honor, with a lot of 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 ever again.” That was when the alter ego arrived. “I am 5% Fernando and 95% HueyCoyote; Fernando was a child who suffered a lot of harassment, a lot of bullying. Coyote came to hug me and tell me: ‘come, calm down. Everything is fine. ’”
He rediscovered music in his adolescence. 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 started to become 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,” he says.
When exposed to this new world, Coyote had a musical conflict 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 to Russia.” He began to soak up the music close to him “and everything changed when he discovered the artesa dance,” an Afro-Mexican dance that takes place on the small coast of Guerrero and Oaxaca. Coyote explains that the dance is done on a platform “and legend has it that it started because the mestizos would turn the rafts upside down and stomp on them. It seems to me the most punk act that exists.”
Coyote also went towards punk. Not with guitar strumming, 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 fits 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; it is no longer necessary to knock on the doors of the major record companies and hope that an executive likes your bet.
Source: elpais
