Pablo Torre Finds Out - Her Way: How an Obscure Mariachi Singer Went from Quinceañeras, to the World Series, to Kendrick Lamar

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

Deyra Barrera was playing birthday parties and restaurants and funerals in Los Angeles when she got the call: Kendrick Lamar wanted her to sing on his new album, GNX. And now, if we’re lucky, she might be a guest at the Super Bowl 59 halftime show. But today, we find out why there is no better soundtrack for her rise — from a tiny town in Mexico to the World Series, with the Dodgers — than the musical genre she’s mastered: mariachi. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre. And today, we're going to find out what this sound is. If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky. Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraff Kings Network. Hold on. Let me close the door. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. This is really cool for me to have you on the show, Deira, Barrera, because, you know, I've been walking around. I live in New York City. And I've been walking around listening to your music for a couple weeks now. You've been the soundtrack to my everyday life. Thank you for the invite. Thank you for having me in your podcast. I'm very happy and nervous because I've been telling everybody my English.

Like Celia Cruz used to say, my English is nobody good looking. So I'm going to try to do my best. And well, I'm happy to be here. Your English is beautiful so far. I've been practicing. It speaks, though, to how crazy I imagine your life must have been since November. Oh, my God. I don't know if you can see my under-ice black.

I haven't slept well since November 22nd when the NX album came out. it's been crazy for me. It's been like, oh my God, I didn't imagine this impact. Dara, you turn on Kendrick Lamar's new album, and the first voice you hear is not Kendrick Lamar. It's you. Thank you. Kendrick, thank you, God, for this opportunity.

How do you describe what you were doing before that album? I've been doing a lot of things, rally shows. working a lot, recording my music, my CDs. It's been like up and down, up and down. And it's been very difficult to me. But I never give up. I never give up because this is my passion to sing. That's what I do to live, singing every weekend in weddings, kinsiannettas, private parties, birthdays, funerals.

And I do it with all my heart because I love my work. work. I love my job because I love to sing. I love to transmit that happiness or sadness and always looking for an opportunity to do something more big in my career. After this GNX album, it's happening. How has the Kinseniera business been since you, since you debuted on GNX? The other day I went to a Kinseñera to play and the Kinsenera to play and the Kinsueira was, oh my God, she's the one to sing with Kendrik Lamar, and she's on me Kinsianera. The young people, the Kinsianera, they were like all over me.

Can I take a picture with you? Can I take a picture? Can you sing first? Can you sing the part when you, with Kendrick Lamar? Okay, I'm mariachi, and I start singing like, Tiento Aki to Presentia. And they're like, oh my God. It's crazy.

It's something that makes me wonder how Kendrick Lamar discovered you in the first place. I was singing for a Fernando Alenzuela tribute at a World Series for Snake game in Fire Stadium. They contact me after that. And they told me to sing my style. I went. I sang. And the rest is story.

You know, when I told Deira Berera, today's guest, that I'd been listening. listening to her music while walking all around New York City at the top of the show. I wasn't referring to her music with Kendrick Lamar on GNX. What I was referring to was her earlier catalog, the kind of stuff that you're hearing underneath me right now, which I'd only discovered because Kendrick, who was about to play the halftime show at Super Bowl 59 in case you hadn't heard, had somehow discovered her.

Mariachi music is our culture from Mexico, is trumpets, violin, guitars, bass player, the big guitaron. Makes all together all kinds of rhythms, happy songs, sad songs. Dara Barrera, like Kendrick, lives and breathes and embodies the city of Los Angeles, which is a city on fire in a country where the newly inaugurated president is now threatening mass deportations back to the place that Dera is originally from. and the fact that all of this is happening, while Dara is finally enjoying a suddenly prosperous second act in her career,

appearing on no less than three separate tracks on the biggest album of the year at age 49, seemed worth finding out about. I had questions for a person that I had absolutely heard, but knew very little about at this point. And it turned out to be a story about sports and family and this musical genre, which is resonating uniquely, I think, at this moment. Because Mariachi can feel like the saddest thing you've ever heard,

but also the happiest. In Mariachi, can, to put cultures together, to put cultures together, no matter if you're, whatever you are, no matter colors, colors, nothing. The music of mariachi is universal. It is a rare thing to have a genre that can be played in the opposite parts of the emotional spectrum.

We can play everything. We can play everything. Yes, yes. You can now be on a song reincarnated about Tupac. You can be on the closing track of GNX, Gloria. You can have a co-writing credit on all three songs. I've been working since I was very young. Like around 16 years old, I started singing with my mom and my sister. I learned my first lessons with my mom because she used to play guitar. And she showed me how to play guitar and sing.

My abuelito, he was a singer too, my mom, my uncle. My auntie, everybody, they sing. So when I was very young, little, well, my family is part of the animal. All weekends, like they bring music and they start singing. So I'm always there with them hearing my mom sing. And I was like, I want to sing too. I want to sing. When I moved from Mexico to here to Los Angeles, we start singing every weekend

in different nightclubs of South L.A. gain money to pay rent, to pay bills to eat. That's what I do to live. Since I was little girl, I was dreaming that someday something big is going to happen to me. By the way, I listened to you on LaVos. Ah, yes, yes, La Vos Mexico. Goose bumps. I hope my voice.

And, well, here I'm here I'm. That was during the pan. pandemic and I was like here at home like a year doing nothing. So I was like, oh my God, I have to do something. I don't want to be home anymore. So I decided to go to La Boz, Mexico and I left. When I go to reality shows, I don't go to like, I want to have the first place. No, I just go there to enjoy.

to get to know new people. I feel so blessed, so happy with this. But as for why this story is truly a sports story, you should know that the person Deira Barrera was most excited to get to know was the athlete responsible in his own way for Kendrick discovering Deira in the first place. A true Los Angeles legend named Fernando Valenzuela. Has pitched a no-hitter at 10-17 in the evening of June the 29th, 1990.

If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky. Fernando Valenzuela was a folk hero in the realest sense. And I need the kids out there to understand this part. because he was a left-handed pitcher who would kick his leg high into the air and gaze up towards the heavens before throwing a screwball that seemed to defy physics, and maybe that alone would be charming. But the guy also was the first and only player in the history of baseball

to win the Rookie of the Year Award and the Cy Young Award for Best Pitcher in All of Baseball in the same year, 1981, which was also, by the way, the same year that he was, He won the World Series with the Dodgers, and all of it was simply known as Fernando Mania. Who's that out on the mound is a little bit round? It's Fernando. He looks so relaxed. He's a chubby cofaxed that Fernando.

Every hitter's appalled when they see his crew ball to the mom. Fernando became an icon. And eventually, in retirement, a radio announcer, working up in a booth at Dodger Stadium, commenting on the games with his partner in Spanish. But before all of us, and here's the part that was key to Fernando's lore in Southern California, he and his parents, who were farmers,

had lived in a town of roughly 500 or so people in Mexico's northwestern state of Sonora, a town called Echo Oakhila, which one visiting newscaster from a local L.A. affiliate described this way. The Valenzuela told me they were simple and primitive people as they invited me to their home. Fernando's room was just like he explained it to me.

Small, with one bed, that's where he and his five brothers slept. The six sisters all slept in another room. The baseball field was just a hop, skip, and a jolt. jump from this house. And while he slept at home, it was on this baseball field he spent most of his time. The field had no backstop, paper bases, no fences, and tree stumps were used as benches. And this scene, the scene of this field in this tiny town, was intimately familiar to somebody else, it turns out.

A future singer named Dera Cornejo Barrera, who just happened to be born. Born nearby. So my dad used to play baseball too with Fernando's brothers. I remember when I used to live in Sonora until when I was like around eight years, near years old. And when we knew that Fernando is here in Chihuahuaquila, everybody, let's go, let go, if we can see him. And I remember Fernando used to come out in the door and he used to throw.

to throw balls to us to all the kids. We were like running like crazy. Oh, we have a Fernando Valenzuela. So I have very good memories of that. But I never met Fernando Alenzuela in person since like around seven years ago. Seven years ago because another friend, the words with Fernando, Pepe Inigues, they were together for the radio station. He introduced me.

And one time I met Pepi Inge in a birthday party that I went to play. They hired me. So, hey, you're Pepi Iggyz, blah, blah. Oh, yeah, I said, tell Fernando that I'm Deira Cornejo. I know he knows who's my dad, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, yeah. And he told me, when you go to Dodger Stadium, call me and come and say hi to us, and I'm going to introduce to Fernando Alenzuela.

And yes, he was very serious at first. At first, he was very serious. And I told him, oh, my God, I'm from Villajue, Sonora. My dad is Antonio Borneo. Oh, yeah, I know who is your dad. He used to play very good baseball with his brothers. So we started to have a friendship, very, very nice friendship. And he was always telling us jokes, bad jokes, but I have to laugh at.

I want to explain Fernando Valenzuela to people who maybe aren't as familiar with baseball. He's somebody that my friend, Bill Plashke, who writes for the LA Times, called the most celebrated Dodger, the most popular Los Angeles Dodger ever, the most impactful Los Angeles Dodger ever. And I was there to sing when they retired his number. Yes, yes. So that was August 11, 2023. They finally retired the great. Fernando Valenzuela's jersey. Tonight we celebrate. How did you get booked for that gig? Fernando always go,

went to see me at a restaurant that I always play on Sundays. And after he played golf, he gets very early to have breakfast and listen to our music. And like joking, like talking, always with him joking, I asked him, hey, take me to Godgers.

I want to sing there. I want to. I need to sing there because everybody's there, my friend. Thanks, everybody. And I have to be there, too. He always telling me that she didn't like mariachi at all. He always telling me, I don't like mariachi. I like banda.

You know, banda, the big, that tuba, the very noisy, noisy. He liked that. So when they retired, his number, I asked him, why you don't bring Bandar Recodo? The most famous band of Sinaloa, Mexico, very famous. Oh, no, because I want you to play. I want you there with your group. So, one day, he took somebody on the crew of the Dodgers.

They called me, Fernando Valenzuela wants you to sing for the retired number. You're watching. Oh, my God. For real? I was in the newspapers and the Noticias, Noticieros. Oh, Deira Barreira from Villajore Sonora. She was the singer. Fernando asked for to go to sing for his retired number.

So I was everywhere. They were talking about me everywhere. But a little more than a year after that, a year after Fernando Valenzuela's Jersey retirement ceremony on October 22nd, 2024, the headlines across northwestern Mexico and Southern California were dominated by a different kind of news. A sad night for Dodger fans and for all of baseball.

Dodger legend Fernando Valenzuela has died. Team announcing the news tonight just days away from the Dodgers return to the World Series against the New York Yankees. Fernando Valenzuela was just 63 years old when he died of septic shock in Los Angeles. Right before the start of one of the most highly anticipated and highly rated World Series in recent baseball memory. And when it came time for the Dodgers to face it. figure out how to honor the most celebrated, most popular, most impactful player in their

franchise's history before a game that everybody, by the way, in Los Angeles was absolutely going to watch. Team officials orchestrated one moment that was meant to be. When Fernando passed, they called me right away to, if I wanted to do the tribute to sing there. And of course, I said, yes. thinking about, oh, it's the first game of the World Series, junkies and Dodgers. I didn't think about that. I just think about that I want to sing for my friend.

And I got there, very emotional, very sad, because it was too fast. I didn't think that he was going to pass. To honor Fernando Valenzuela, who is truly one of the most important players in the history of sports in America, Did you know which song you wanted to start with? Yes, yes.

I was singing there, looking at the cabin when he used to sit to chronic the game with the Spanish Riders station. And I will always go there to say hi. And I was singing and looking at the videos and looking up to the cabin and he wasn't there. And he was very like sad for me. The people who was like screaming his name, when I put my voice very, very high, they were like, oh, my skin were like chills. And now he's my angel, he's my angel and I feel sad because he's not here anymore, but I can feel that he's doing a lot of things for us. We want, we won, Dodger, the series, the world series, yeah? I'm sorry, you're in New York.

I was going to say that was painful for me. Painful for me. But now that I understand the backstory, it's hard not to root for you, Thera. I mean, in some sense, that is a dream also. Okay, so there is another angle to this completely surreal story that we've been reporting that I cannot help but be curious about, especially from Deira's perspective. Because this part of the story, first of all, is currently moving its way. through the court system as we speak,

culminating in what should be a historic moment in popular culture at the Super Bowl next month. And also, because Dera Barrera, a woman who learned how to sing from her mother in this tiny, tiny town in Mexico, has implicitly taken aside

in an extraordinarily public and extremely North American type of feud. Oh, my God, I have new friends now. Oh, yeah. Kendrick Lamar fans are my friends now. A war of words turning into a full-blown feud between two of the biggest names in rap, Kendrick Lamar, and Drake.

The two longtime rivals battling it out in a matter of days, releasing eight new songs one after the other with the intensity heating up over the weekend. Drake! You know that, brother. He's going ahead and filed a lawsuit against his own record company, Universal Music Group, for Kendrick Lamar's not like us. Attorneys for Drake say the song, which is aimed at the Canadian rapper

is an example of valuing, quote, corporate greed over the safety and well-being of its artists, end quote. And so, yeah, I just wanted to know, in general, had you been following Drake versus Kendrick, all of that before you became a collaborator of Kendrick? You know what? I'm not really listened to the rap. music. I want to be honest. I always listen mariachi, Mexican music.

And that raised another question for me about the conversation that Dara Barrera had with Kendrick Lamar in his camp when they brought her a true outsider to the genre into their famously private studio for the first time. I told them, you know what? I don't know how to rap. No, we don't want you hear you. We don't want you we want you to do your voice,

your voice, your potente voice, your vibrato, Fuerte. Yes. Okay. Yes. Put my headphones there,

okay. They put music and I start like singing and singing and singing and singing and singing and singing and that's it. The beginning of Wacked up murals, which is the first track

on this album, of course. Can you translate what the words you're singing there, what they mean? Siento here to presence

I feel your presence here. La Noche de a noche last night night and we start

crying. Yesterday somebody whacked out my mural I didn't know what is all about because I

just went to record and I never listened to that song. So I was like okay, what's going to happen. It sounds like you were

yorar. It sounds like you were crying too when you heard. I was crying, without knowing what is going to happen later. Do you remember when you first realized when you first learned

that in fact you were going to be the first sound on GNX? It was a surprise because I was like I went to record and then I didn't hear anything. I remember my friend called me

and she told me. me, do you hear the new album? You're on it. And not only one song. You're on three songs. I was in Arizona with my aunt and my mom for a wedding. They don't know about rap music. So they asked me, okay, who is this guy? Oh my God. It is the most famous of rap singers of the world. and I'm there in his new album. Part of what I think people are learning, though, because of your collaboration with Kendrick, is that Mariachi, that Mexico is such an enormous part of, of course, Los Angeles,

which is obvious to every Mexican person or anybody who is actually in Los Angeles. It's 50% Hispanic, Los Angeles. And yet people are sort of realizing now, for real, like, wait a minute, Kendrick picked this Mariachi singer, and now they're realizing the history. that you guys share culturally? He was bringing that all together, our music together, and music doesn't have any boundaries.

There is no race, there is no color, there is no frontiers, nothing. Rap and Mariachi, imagine. That's a beautiful example of how can music can get together all cultures from all the world. Something that I didn't appreciate But I was doing a little bit of research about how many songs a good mariachi needs to know. Because it's, again, you play every type of event, happy, sad, celebrations, funerals.

So about how many songs would you say you know? My friends, they always call me, oh my God, data, you know a lot of songs. You're like a, you know what, prokola? When you put money and put music. Oh, a jukebox. Oh, okay. You're a jukebox. Because you know every, every, every song in the world.

They asked me for a song. Oh, yeah, I know it. I know it. You mentioned Celia Cruz before, and I was like, okay, so she obviously knows Guantanamara. Of course. That's an easy one. Oh, yes, yes, yes. You want me to sing it?

I would love nothing more there than that specific thing. I have my guitar here. Oh, my gosh. It's such a beautiful song. Oh, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Hold on. I got one more. Do you know any Sinatra?

You got to know some Sinatra. Frank Sinatra? Yes. My way. I record that song, my way, but it's Spanish version. It's one of the songs that makes me cry every time I sing it. Yesterday, somebody asked for that song, and I was singing. And looking at my mother, she was there.

And I started, like, I started crying because she's, She has dementia. So it's very sad to me because she's my number one fan. And she don't know what's going on. But she only knows that. She loves to hear me thinking. So I was singing it my way yesterday and I started crying because I feel very sad to see my mom there. And she was a singer when she was young.

She sings professionally too. And like she's living the dream with me, the dream that she couldn't do more. And she's leaving it with me. And I just want to do a lot of things before she forgets, who am I? I just want to do it for her because she always telling me, you have a lot of telling me, her, you sing's beautiful, people love you.

I want you to be more like famous and thinking everywhere. And I want to do it because before she forgets who am I or I don't, I'm sorry. I get very emotional when I talk about my mom's

dementia. And he gets me my heart. So sometimes I just want like, Mom, come on, let's sing. because it's a therapy for her. And she loves to sing. She sings beautiful.

Music is beautiful because now that she's sick with dementia, she can sing every, every son and she doesn't forget the lyrics of the songs. And that's a very, very good therapy. What do you hope for Mariachi as, uh, as, uh, form of music. I just want to take my music all over the world. So with this DNX album of Kendri Lamar, I think

it's going to be more connecting more people, more people with our music together. So very honored and orgoyosa, how do you say? Orgoyosa. Proud. Proud to be, to, that I'm Mexican woman.

And the name. in the name of all my Mexican mariachi friends, women that we've been here working a lot, trying to take our music more up levels because we're a woman. It's very different. It's very difficult to be a woman. There's a lot of machismo

that sometimes they don't let us do. It's changing. It's like we're having more opportunities now. More. So in name of all my friends, woman, talented woman that I know a lot in name of them. And I feel very proud to have my Mexican flood. And being Sonorenza, Mexican, I just want to do the best.

So they can feel proud of me too. I want to see you play the Super Bowl, Dara. I want you to be there. I want you and Kendrick to be there in New Orleans for the Super Bowl. We're praying together. This is what we're doing. Yeah. I have this,

Mira. I always, every night I play Virgenita de Guadalupe, every night, La Virgen de Guadalupe, I always ask God and La Virgenita to do the best for me,

to let me do. If I'm going to be there, I'm going to be there because of them. So I don't know, but I have it in my mind that, okay, anything can happen. Imagine first woman,

Mexican mariachi at Oh ahead I'm good me too Dara me too

Me too Going to be Historia And I'm pretty sure Dera that you're going to do it your way

My way Amimana So So the episode isn't over yet Thank you for sticking around And the reason

I'm still here is because I wanted you to know that after my conversation with Dara several weeks ago now, her life did turn back to relative normalcy.

She was still working every single weekend at Kinsenierras and parties and restaurants. But then the L.A. fires broke out. And they were close enough that Dara could see the flames from her own front door, not far from Altadina. And that night, she told us, felt like a horror movie.

Her home ultimately wound up being okay, thankfully. But her clients, the people who had just been marveling, as we had discussed, at having this woman from the Kendrick Lamar album in front of them, performing privately for them, they weren't all as lucky. And all of them began canceling their parties altogether, because, of course, of course they had to do that. Which is how the other night Deira found herself,

at the seafood restaurant where she regularly performs, and a customer approached and asked the human jukebox, that is Dera Barrera, to sing a song called Ami Manera, or, as it's known in English, my way. And as Dera hit this chorus, and this was just as she told us that she would, She began to cry.

She was thinking about the suddenness of loss, she told us. She was thinking about the fires, about Fernando, about her neighbors, about Los Angeles, about her mother, the woman who had taught her to love music in the first place. And, yeah, sadness and happiness. Sadness and happiness. They really can't feel like two strings on the same instrument. And so what Deira Berera did, all that Deira Barrera could do there in the corner of that restaurant, is what she hopes to do in front of the entire world, at the Super Bowl, maybe, if we're lucky.

She sang. This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.