Edgar Barrera, the most nominated artist at the Latin Grammys: “Thanks to TikTok you have five seconds to catch the consumer” | Culture

Edgar Barrera wrote his first song when he was 15 years old. It was a naive theme of love for a girl he liked. Today the recipient is his wife. “I don’t remember the name of the song. But it was very bad,” he says with a laugh on the phone from Mexico. “Just recently I found a notebook at home with my first lyrics and laughed a lot because they were painful. Well, it’s part of the process. Sometimes it’s important to look back to appreciate what you have now.” And what Barrera has now, at 33, is enormous.

He is the Latin American composer of today. His creations for Maluma, Camilo, Bad Bunny, Shakira, Grupo Frontera, Manuel Turizo and Alejandro Sanz have won him 20 Latin Grammy Awards and one international one. There will certainly be a lot more next Thursday the 16th in Seville, at the celebration of the Latin Grammy Gala 2023. Barrera is the one with the most nominations (13); He is followed by three Colombian artists, each with seven members, for whom he has composed: Shakira, Karol G and Camilo. The Colombian composer Kevyn Mauricio Cruz also counts seven I cook and six from Argentine producer Bizarrap.

Barrera’s story says a lot about a world full of inequalities, where far-sighted decisions can make life easier. His parents come from City of Miguel Aleman, a small community in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas with about 20,000 residents and bordering Texas. When the mother was about to give birth, the couple crossed the border and drove 50 miles to deliver the baby at a hospital in McCallen, Texas. Goal achieved: Edgar would be a US citizen. “That was quite common, especially in the 1990s. Many parents did the same thing: They crossed the border so their children were born in the United States, then returned to Mexico. This was done in order to have American papers and to make everything easier for the future. It’s a sacrifice that parents make to give their children a better future.” Here’s how it was: Professionally, it was very good for Barrera to have a Texas ID in his wallet to move easily through the land of opportunity . “Although I feel very Mexican. In fact, I have dual citizenship,” he emphasizes.

Barrera lived in Mexico until he was 15 and became interested in music there. His father played in a local band, Mister Chivo, and he began learning chords on the guitar thanks to a learning method that was available at newsstands every month and ” Songbooks. Remember that the first song he learned was one by the Argentine group Soda Stereo. And that he took part in a competition at school and performed there Have a shower, from Santana. “My friends played the Game Boy, but I preferred the guitar,” he explains. At the age of 15 he moved to Texas to study. At 20, he decided to try his luck in Miami. He gave himself four months: If he couldn’t find a career as a composer and producer in the mecca of Latin American music, he would try somewhere else and with a different approach to work. He ended up in a studio where his job was to bring coffee to the bosses and collect the cables. Before those four months were up, one of the people in charge realized that Edgar had a talent for creating and recording songs and offered him an opportunity.

It has been based in Miami for 13 years. The Year of the Explosion begins in 2015 when the big balls arrive: Without contract, played by Maluma; crazy in love, in the voices of FarrucoAbraham Mateo and Christian Daniel, and Hello DJ, performed by Cnco and Yandel. Barrera acts as composer and producer for all three. From there, his partnerships with Maluma, Camilo and Christian Nodal began. The latter aims to renew the regional Mexican music, the famous corrido tumbado, which today is certainly the most widespread Latin American genre with stars like Nodal himself or Peso Pluma.

Barrera’s production focuses on the tangle of genres called urban music, which includes reggaeton, Latin pop, hip-hop and regional Mexican music… “I think that the global explosion of Latin music began with the success of Slow [2017, el tema de Luis Fonsi con Daddy Yankee, que luego recibió un gran empujón con la versión de Justin Bieber]. It opened a market for Latin music. In the 2000s, Ricky Martin, Shakira, Enrique Iglesias and Gloria Estefan had to sing in English to get into the American market. Now it’s the other way around: Americans want to sing in Spanish. All of this has happened since the creation of Slow”. And he adds: “What’s important is that Latin music is no longer just for Latinos. This barrier has already been broken. I think we will stay there. Latinos are found in all parts of the world, in Asia and in Europe, except the United States. Latin music is going global because Latinos are expanding around the world. “I was recently in France and the waiter knew Grupo Frontera.”

It is considered a tool at the service of the artist: “I am his tailor. I make suits tailored to the artist.” How do you make an artist feel a song they’ve written? “I try to involve the interpreter. There are those who don’t compose, like Grupo Frontera, and then they tell me about the situation they are going through and I write songs tailored to their feelings. But then there are Karol G and Shakira, with whom I sit down to create because they like to be part of the creative process. In this case, I help them express what they want.”

This brings us to the crucial point: what a song has to have to become a hit. This is where this monster called TikTok shows its face: “I’m trying to get the choir [estribillo] Arrive quickly, within 45 seconds. It’s about grabbing attention from the first moment, so you can’t play a 30-second intro of the music because people will switch off. Thanks to TikiTok, you have five seconds to catch the consumer, because if you don’t, they leave.” So do TikTok and its fast-paced world of decoys dictate the standards of musical art? “I try to adapt the music to what’s happening in the culture right now. And TikTok is a reference at the moment. If music can’t keep up with developments in popular culture, we’ll be left behind. They are formulas that I did not invent. I worked with the Swedes, like the producer Max Martin [con éxitos para Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Adele, Backstreet Boys, Celine Dion, Justin Timberlake o Taylor Swift], and I learned a lot from them who are teachers. “Of course you shouldn’t forget the feeling, but today mathematics is very important in music.”

With this formula, he says, he can achieve success in a very short time, as was the case with him A X100to, by Grupo Frontera and Bad Bunny. “We were packing because they were already kicking us out of the studio, and I said to my colleague: ‘Brother, Let’s work on this idea.’ And it came out in 45 minutes. The same thing happened with La Bachata, by Manuel Turizo. I work better under pressure. The less you think about the songs and the more you feel them, the better.”

Barrera’s goal these days is to soak up Spanish music. He takes advantage of the gala in Seville, rents a house in Madrid and travels “the cities” to discover Spanish rhythms. As he composes a song every 45 minutes for Spanish artists, the Grammy Awards will descend on the peninsula.

_