Reyna Tropical & Xiuhtezcatl Build Cultural Bridges On New Single “CAMINO”
April 16, 2026 - By Psychic Hotline
Reyna Tropical and Xiuhtezcatl have released the new single “Camino” at all digital music services. The song pays homage to the land and traditions that have inspired cumbia music, connecting Latin America and the diaspora with the African and Indigenous rhythms and stories that formed the genre.
“While cumbia is so quintessential to Mexican culture, we wanted to center the part of our culture which is often forgotten and erased: the Indigenous and African innovation that makes cumbia what it is,” Fabi aka Reyna Tropical explains. “This song is shared through the perspective of two mixed Indigenous artists with vastly different experiences. We wanted to create a bridge to a story that is essential right now: unity in community and land connection at a time when there’s a lot of need for hope.”
“Camino” connects the worlds of Indigenous wisdom, diaspora, community, Queer Love & Afro Mexico with the pathways that these bridges are establishing and promoting. “During a culmination of global loss, confusion, fear, unknown, violence, and genocide, when urgency and overwhelm consume us, I can’t imagine a better moment to release ‘Camino’—a song that keep us focused on our collective path though baile, comunidad y confianza,” Fabi shares. “‘El camino nos carga, la cultura nos conecta, y la musica nos deja ir y fluir.’
Reyna Tropical and Xiuhtezcatl have been friends for years and started working on “Camino” in 2021. The song was created in collaboration with the Colombian percussionist Diva Cruz and the Bolivian co-producer Susobrino. “When Reyna and I started making this song many years ago, we knew it would be special,” Xiuhtezcatl shares. “There are few artists who truly treat their music as medicine in the way Reyna Tropical does. As artists, our relationship and responsibility to our communities is such a significant throughline within our art. It ties us to musical ancestries that are cradled in resistance, celebration and resilience, that remind us of our role in moments of disarray and chaos in the external world.”
“Camino” was performed for the first time in a live setting last month at Mexico City’s Vive Latino, one of the largest music festivals in Latin America. “Meeting Xiuhtezcatl in 2021 set the foundation for what ‘Camino’ has come to represent and document in this friendship, collaboration, and mutual expression,” Fabi affirms. “Moving with the current of an energy you feel in your gut you need to follow and shifting with fluidly. Trusting that the process will get you where you need to be, when it’s meant to be. Listening to what ‘Camino’ became, it makes sense that it encompasses the voices and sound of the diaspora.”
