Screenshot of an episode of the “El Pesero Show” in which singer Chayanne tours Mexico City on a bus.Amazon
Mexico City has a lot to offer its visitors. There are activities for every taste. For example, you could sip tequila at a famous dance hall, sing a famous song, and then visit one of the hundreds of metropolitan attractions and have your photo taken there. But what if it was Chayanne who did all this? That he does a few dance steps from his famous choreography of the song Torero in the historic Salón Ángeles. Have him make a version of Volver, Volver after drinking a shot of the traditional agave-based spirit; and finally, surprise a quinceañera to take a picture with her, no less than at the Angel of Independence, and take her for a ride through the streets of the Mexican capital in a truck. Wouldn’t that be a unique experience?
This is what El Pesero Show offers, a program that offers different artists a tour of typical places of the capital while they tell details of their career in an interview accompanied by colorful musical moments. For this first season, the Puerto Rican singer from Tiempo de Vals joins other artists such as Camilo, Ha*Ash, Måneskin, Kenya Os, Gera MX and Matisse, each boarding a pesero – a minibus that takes its name from the peso, the price paid for a ticket at the beginning – and they will talk about their projects, their relationship with Mexico City, while driving through the big city on a route specially created for each of them.
Amazon Music Director Paul Forat explains that the project was born out of a shortage, so to speak. They noticed, he explains, that when musicians or bands arrived in Mexico, they would tie themselves up or hug the flag in an iconic moment in the last song, but that lasted for the length of the song. The idea of this production was that the feeling of connection with Mexico would last.
Screenshot of a moment from The El Pesero Show where Chayanne takes a fifteen-year-old for a ride in a van.Amazon
“We want the artists participating in the El Pesero Show to be ‘Chilangos for a day but Mexicans for a lifetime.’ The project is the opportunity that we give to an artist to get to know Mexico, to dive into its corners, to live it and fans can see how an artist enjoys his country,” affirms Forat.
The Pesero Show, hosted by announcer and makeup artist Pame Voguel, kicked off on January 26th. Two episodes have already been released and a new one is released every 15 days. The first with Chayanne and the second, which will be broadcast on February 9th, with the Italian pop-rock band Måneskin, who, unlike the Puerto Ricans, make their route through the historic center of Coyoacán in the pesero – one of the most intellectual and bohemian of the Quarters from the Mexican capital – where they cover, among other things, the song Beggin accompanied by mariachis.
Italian band Måneskin performs a song in central Coyoacán accompanied by mariachis.Amazon Music
Each episode, lasting around 20 minutes, maintains a block structure in which the artist or band performs their own song, but with a twist, either in karaoke format, as is the case with I Love You, period . by Chayanne; or acoustically during movement, like Måneskin. The other block consists of a dialogue between the artist and the host about their history, projects and relationship with Mexico to achieve the reinterpretation of songs known as volver, volver, a classic of ranchera music, that of Vicente Fernández was popularized; or Beggin, from Americans The Four Seasons.
“We’re clearly obsessed with the fact that when a chapter is closed, something special is left behind. Everyone knows Chayanne and has seen her sing, but I assure you that no one has seen him dismount from a pesero, walked in the Ángel de la Independencia and was lucky enough to find a fifteen-year-old to greet her and put Bus on the chair,” adds the director of Amazon Music.
Eight artists across genres, ranging from rap, pop, and pop-rock, are featured in the production, a curatorship that Forat says aims to connect with different artists and stories. “These are artists who have a direct or indirect connection to the country,” says the director of Amazon Music, and so the opportunity arose to produce the project together with Sony Music. “The biggest challenge was explaining the concept to international artists as there were no references to show them what it was all about or what it meant to be a Chilango. Artists enthusiastically accepted, realizing it was a creative, different and fun way to show themselves to their fans,” he adds Roberto López, President of Sony Music Mexico.
Although episodes have just started airing, Forat doesn’t rule out the possibility of other artists being included in the future, but he does say they’re trying not to become obsessed with what’s to come while Amazon Music works alongside other musicals focusing on emerging talent like Amaneceres or Rompe MX to name a few. “Pesero Show represents a continuity to nurture artists and their talent and allow them to connect with their fans in different ways,” he concludes.
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