Joss Favela: “My new album is my way of saying: ‘Dad, we got it'”

The Angels. Joss Favela (Sinaloa, México, 1990) premieres his new album on September 9, “clearing the mind“, in which the Mexican singer pays homage to his father’s frustrated dream of being an artist, using a restored family accordion in some of his compositions.

“My new album is my way of saying: ‘Dad, we got it,'” summarizes the artist in an interview with Efe less than a month before the release.

Between personal life and music

Since he began his career in 2016 with the record work “Hecho a mano”, Favela has become one of the most revered faces on the Mexican regional music scene, amassing tens of millions of views across its various platforms.

Also, Favela He has managed to be the first artist of this genre to record a “Tiny Desk”, the renowned sessions developed by the American public radio NPR.

Despite having such successful milestones and statistics that support his music, Favela avoid the fever of ‘likes’ and numbers on social networks.

The two-time Grammy nominee is capable of working out contractual issues with Sony Music, appearing on México’s voice along with pop stars like the Spanish David Bisbal and end up blending in with nature and animals on his ranch near Culiacán. All in a few hours, all the same person.

It was on that farm where he was inspired to create “clearing the mind“, where he noticed that unfulfilled dream of his father and where he decided that he wanted to pay tribute to him.

“When I was 7 or 8 years old, my father asked me the crucial question of what I wanted to be when I grew up. I answered that I was an artist. (…) and from then on, he never took his finger off the line so that I could achieve it,” he says. grateful.

Life on his ranch was, and is, laborious. If today leaving rural México to become a star of the song supposes, being generous, something more than a stroke of luck, in the seventies it was simply inconceivable.

“But my father had always liked music. What’s more, my grandmother gave him a red accordion that I restored and used on the new album,” he continues. Favela.

The seventies aesthetic permeates the rhythms and melodies that the drums, bass and accordion give off in “clearing the mind“. A kind of inspiration that is also manifested in their way of dressing.

“It’s important because it’s not just a ‘look’ or a costume, but an inspiration reflected in my art,” admits the singer-songwriter, dressed in a beige ranchero hat that contrasts with a completely purple jacket.

The style of the new album

Last July 15, Favela he released “Algo transitorio”, a preview of the new album that already outlined for his followers an idea of ​​the paths this album would take.

Love as a theme, something usual in his compositions, will also have a place in “clearing the mind” with songs like “700 days”, in which the singer recalls a relationship that lasted just that long and ended up breaking up due to lack of understanding with that couple.

“The song of “700 days” comes from the need to verbalize a passionate love that is already gone”, he assures Favela.

Open to incorporating new sounds in the Mexican regional, the Sinaloan is recognized for the sensitivity with which he endows most of his lyrics and that has made him stand out as a voice that transcends generations with his music.

Behind his facet as a singer, Favela He has also shone with his talent as a composer for great artists such as Alejandro Fernández, Julión Álvarez and Banda MS, among others.

“I think you have to live to write later. I can’t write a letter about something that they tell me (…) when I write for others, I do it as if it were something of mine,” reveals the artist.

On his new album, Favela It will only have one collaboration, entitled “La bailadora”, together with the band Grupo Firme, a native of Tijuana.

It will be early November when Favela start a tour of up to twenty dates in the United States, traveling from Chicago to Anaheim (California) with his friend and Colombian popular music singer Jessi Uribe.

Before, Favela He will have almost two months to assess the reception of this new job with which he gives his father a large part of the responsibility for his success and repeats: “Boss, we did it”.