Reyna Tropical Releases New Song “Ya Va Pasar”
November 16, 2023 - By Psychic Hotline
Today, Reyna Tropical announces her signing to Psychic Hotline and presents a new single, “Ya Va Pasar.” Investigating landscapes of the tropical diaspora, Reyna Tropical is a musical exploration of intuition, transition, connection and continuation—a celebration of spiritual survival pulsing with the beat of all things tropical. The group is led by guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer Fabiola Reyna, who is also the founder of She Shreds Media. “Ya Va Pasar” is the first song Reyna wrote after the passing of her friend and bandmate in Reyna Tropical, Sumohair (Nectali Diaz,) and bears witness to her journey through grief. Reyna and Diaz were originally brought together through the powerful connection and spiritual transcendence that came from writing music and documenting moments. This song is the first step of continuing in solidarity with the band’s founding vision: to be a voice and a platform for the joy and injustices living within the spectrum of Queer Love & Afro-Mexico.
In 2022, following Diaz’s passing, Reyna was faced with the difficult and deeply personal question of whether she should continue their musical project. “Being in the thickest part of my grief during the winter after he passed, a lot of insecurities and self doubt came up,” Reyna explains. Doing many things alone for the first time, Reyna describes this time as discouraging and scary. “I was questioning my own creative ability and whether or not Reyna Tropical could continue.” Through the process of writing new songs, she discovered a way to maintain her relationship with Sumohair. “I never wanted to do this alone,” she says. “At one point I sat down and forced myself to pick up my guitar. When I was going through the sounds in my looper I found one of Sumohair’s beats and within a couple of hours found myself with a finished song. I cried both because I missed him and from the huge relief I felt realizing that I actually wasn’t doing this by myself.”
“Ya Va Pasar” is the time between something passing and something new coming. Through her journey, Reyna has discovered how the loss of someone we love breaks open the fears and traumas we must face in order to come back to ourselves. “When I was a little girl crying in my grandma’s arms, she would caress my face and say ‘ya va pasar’ until it relaxed me into sleep,” she says. “I think everyone is experiencing grief in some way, but only a few of us know how to hold it, much less talk about it. This song offers relief in knowing that everything passes and everything renews.”
Reyna Tropical formed in 2017 and within a year of the band’s first release, received an invitation to support Bomba Estereo on tour. In the years following, they performed amongst Caribbean waters including Puerto Rico, Colombia and the band’s birth country of Mexico, enhancing their relationship to people and land within the tropical diaspora. Reyna brought her passion of uplifting queerness, multi-racial identity, women and gender expansive experiences, while Diaz focused on creating art that brought awareness towards and reflected the Afro-Mexican experience. During their Tormenta Tropical tour in 2022, they sold out venues in Portland, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, gaining support by artists such as Y La Bamba, Lido Pimienta, and Portugal The Man. Today Fabiola Reyna is accompanied by what she calls “The Tropical Collective / La Colectiva Tropical.” A relationship between herself and fans, friends, musicians, DJs, and producers committed to uplifting the culture of the tropical diaspora, and creating spaces where Black, Indigenous and Queer joy can thrive.
She Shreds is a community-driven, comprehensive answer to guitar culture and music media. Dedicated to women and GNC guitarists and bassists, their mission is to educate, empower, and inspire people through unexplored musical and cultural landscapes. Their vision is to continuously refine, redefine, and reimagine the possibilities of how music connects us, ensuring an inclusive and accessible music community 100% of the time.
