Rapper Santa Fe Klan.Laura Daniela Aranda Pérez (The Exclusive Agency)
When Ángel Quezada (Guanajuato, 23 years old) was a child, the streets of the Guanajuato neighborhood of Santa Fe were flooded with different genres of music: cumbias, corridos, banda, bachata, rock and roll… Hip-hop culture persisted. Take time to spread yourself out with him. It wasn’t until the people in his neighborhood began to bring with them the rhymes and rhythms already established in the United States. He was 13 years old. Soon the name of the Santa Fe Klan (his alias) would echo through the streets across the country. “My reality was cumbia and regional because it’s Mexican music.” The young rapper has quickly made a name for himself on the music scene. With eight albums under their belt, the Santa Fe Klan isn’t about to take a breather. This year alone he has collaborated with a musical reference like Los Ángeles Azules, he is planning the release of two new albums and will embark on his Todo y Nada tour of 38 US cities from June 13th. New goals in my head: “Now I’m going to Spain, China or who knows where.” To another part of the world to start over. That’s what it’s all about, constantly improving and achieving goals.”
The body of the Santa Fe Klan is covered with dozens of tattoos: his pseudonym, religious references and even a large face of Pedro Infante on his back. That was not always so. At the age of 13, the singer set up a small recording studio at his home before ink took over much of his body. It was recorded there, and it recorded the people in the neighborhood. He began selling his records on the streets, a classic among the first artists to start recording their music in independent studios in decades like the ’80s. “All the music was on fire [descargaba] on records and sold them for 15 pesos. Sometimes I traded them for fried foods or fruit. I told them, “It’s the music I record, it’s music you don’t bring.” The music was everywhere,” he says. In addition to physical expansion, he began uploading his songs to platforms such as Soundcloud and Facebook. It took a few more years to establish Tiktok, the platform that has promoted dozens of artists. “I learned that and always threw everything in all the quarters. We deserve respect. By the time I was 15, I had everything under control.”
– Did you expect this success?
– No, I never thought we would come here, I never did it for fame or money. It was always for the love of music. Because of this, I often don’t realize how far we’ve come. Often I don’t even notice how many views the song has. And sometimes they tell me I win awards and I don’t know why.
The music continued to move through the networks and through the streets of Guanajuato. At the age of 16, his first interest came from a record label, the independent Guadalajara-based Alzara. He took another step towards professionalizing his music. “The truth [verdad]I didn’t even think about it, I just said, “Let’s get started.” They dedicated themselves to making videos, and that’s what I didn’t have. He had a lot of music, but he didn’t have the money to make videos. They left her for 1,000 pesos. I sold records for 15 varos, they gave me 120 pesos to wash cars. He was a bastard to collect 1,000 varos…” he recalls. From that moment on, he gained increasing recognition
From rhyme to dance
Rap albums came out. In 2021, the Guanajuat native released Santa Cumbia, a full album of cumbia and cumbia rebajada songs – the Monterrey-born variety, which happened to be Monterrey-born in the early ’90s – that launched him in the footsteps of music in 2021 that he grew up with and that brought him back to his neighborhood origins.
– How do you adapt to other genres?
– I admire many people of different sexes. It’s like trying to represent my favorite artists every time I start doing a different genre.
Santa Cumbia helped him break into the bustling world of cumbia, a genre very popular in the country thanks to phenomena like the Sonideros – the Mexico City-born cultural movement that brings dance to public streets with DJs. On March 10th he launched together with Los Ángeles Azules and Argentine trapper Cazzu Tú y tú, a cumbia that did not go unnoticed by leading magazines such as American Billboard. “Cazzu and the Santa Fe Klan achieve a milestone in their careers by each achieving their first #1 on the regional Mexican airplay charts [la lista en la que muestran las canciones más populares del regional]”, says the publication. At the time, the collaboration surpassed Peso Pluma and Eslabón Armado’s Corrido Ella Baila Sola, a song that became a phenomenon and helped catapult regional Mexican music into global catalogues.
The Santa Fe Klan has repeatedly tried to pressure her into working with Los Ángeles Azules. “I’m close [al grupo] For a long time. He sent her everywhere to say hello, through one person and then another. It’s always been a dream of mine to sing with Los Angeles. I didn’t even realize when all this happened. They sent me the track and suddenly I was already writing it, I couldn’t believe it. When the song came out I never thought they were that heavy. I wanted to make a cumbia like theirs, but they told me, “No, you have to make an original one.” They gave me a challenge and it worked. They raffled off the network,” he says.
I rarely tell anyone anything to tell the mic
Santa Fe clan
Quezada’s lyrics preserve the halo of reality and tell of his life and the anecdotes that happen around him. “The music I make is almost always my sadness, I almost never let it go. It’s not like something happens to me and I’m talking to a friend to cry and tell him, Nel [no], I keep everything. If I have to write, maybe I’ll bring something stuck there and I remember that person, I remember what happened to me. But I never let off steam. I tell almost nobody anything, I just say it into the microphone,” he reveals. “It’s like psychology.”
The songs come out almost in batches. In his trunk he has around 300 recorded songs that are gradually coming to light. “I only took 13 of those and we made one album out of everything, that’s why it’s called Everything because it mixes different genres. “All of a sudden I had the idea of releasing a song every week while I was preparing a rap album,” says the singer. “I have it, I have already advanced it. It’s just that I’m changing things up, it’s just getting cooler to bring Mexican hip-hop to the forefront along with the other genres.”
In the middle of the Santa Fe neighborhood in Guanajuato, a mural reflects the portrait of Ángel Quezada. The place has become a tourist spot and even attracts the attention of the politician on duty. The mayor of the municipality, Alejandro Navarro, spoke a year ago about how the musician’s image had contributed to local reactivation. “The Santa Fe Klan theme […] It creates a local economy around the Santa Fe neighborhood where people sell fried foods, enchiladas, t-shirts, fresh water, fruit, etc. and where everyone is relieved and doing well,” reported the Guanajuato Post office .
Rapper Ángel Quezada.Laura Daniela Aranda Pérez (The Exclusive Agency)
Quezada now lives in Guadalajara, where her son was born last year and where she has her own studio. Though he doesn’t disregard Santa Fe. “I’ll make a room above the store.” [que tengo en el barrio]. When I go there is no place to stay. My whole family has their home and I like to give them space. I stayed there in the studio [que está dentro de la tienda]. If I have the room now, I’ll live there for a few days.” Don’t lose sight of him. “There in the neighborhood were the first songs that people started to hear.”
– Are you staying with a specific person?
-I think so. I have a song called Something Else. This song is included on this todo album out July 27th. I wrote it in a very sad way, but it’s about how I still feel love despite everything that happened, despite love affairs and problems. I wrote it to myself, but it speaks about how I still have feelings. I tell a love that I don’t want just one night. i want something different
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