Tuned In London

Las Hermanas García, Boleros de la Costa Chica, are two young sisters from a small town in the Costa Chica, on Mexico’s Pacific coast. They have become a Spotify sensation in just over a year since their first album was released. With velvet voices, they sing the old bolero love songs that travelled the world in the 1950s and which they have been listening to since they were born. Today they play rock festivals and village fiestas and have been baptized by the local media as “the new voice of the Mexican bolero.”

Las Hermanas Garcia’s international debut is in June this year when they play at the Private View of the ‘Frida Kahlo, Making Herself Up’ exhibition at the V&A, at La Clave Festival on the South Bank and in this intimate concert at the incredible Sands Studio in Rotherhithe, in the “Tuned In London” series of concerts by top world music artists. The venue is a sumptuous sofa-filled cinema, near to the River. Capacity is limited, so please buy your tickets in advance. Although Sands Studio isn’t licensed, there is a great riverside pub immediately opposite (come early, stay late!) as well as free tea and coffee at the concert.

Las Hermanas Garcia are accompanied by electric bass and by their father, the virtuoso requinto guitarist, Mariano García, who is Amuzgo Indian. One of the numbers in the band’s repertoire is a very personal version of the classic Alvaro Carrillo bolero, ‘Sabor a Mí’ a song from their own region which has been translated into 26 languages and has been a big hit recently for the Korean by band EXO-K. For the version by Las Hermanas García, Mariano translated the lyrics from Spanish into his native Amuzgo and, for the first time ever, the song is now bilingual – with Laura and Celia singing in Spanish and their father in Amuzgo. This sensitivity, the pride in the local and the feeling for the universal, is what distinguishes Las Hermanas García and has contributed to their enormous early success.

Their first interview with the national press was filmed by the La Jornada newspaper reporter and this post has been viewed by more than a million people; the title track of their first CD, ‘Que Sepan Todos’ (Discos Corason) has over 1.6 million strikes on Spotify. .
“They are velvet voices,” Eliades Ochoa