Hey, Latino USA listener, Here's a show the Los Chivos from Fudro Media and PRX. It's Latino USA. I'm Maria Rosa today Spanish rock legend Manna. Over their decades long career, Mana has sold over forty million albums worldwide and they continue to have a devoted audience. The Grammy winning Rocqueros made a name for themselves playing fusions of reggae, salsa, rock and punk. The current band members include fer Orberra,
Alex Consalez, Sejo Bayin and Juan Caileros. Earlier this year, on their latest tour, they played seven sold shows at the La Forum, breaking a record previously shared by the Eagles and Kanye West. But Mana didn't start out playing stadiums. Over three decades ago, lead singer Fed was playing small venues in Guadalajara with his band The Green Hat, and he was singing in.
English all the time.
They quickly changed their names to Sombrero Verde and they started singing in Spanish. They eventually added drummer Alex and in nineteen eighty six they became Mana. Since then, they released eleven albums. Their nineteen ninety two album Donde Jugaran los Minos is the best selling Spanish language rock album of all time. Hola, mygal, Welcome to this morning's Walk
of Fame ceremony. In twenty sixteen, they became the first Mexican rock band to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in twenty eighteen, they received the Latin Music Lifetime Award from Billboard and were awarded Person of the Year at the Latin Grammys. But back when they were just starting out, drummer Alex Gonzalez says, it wasn't all that easy for this How I made it segment. Alex is going to take it from here.
This is Alex Gonzalez.
I am the drummer, one of the songwriters and producers of the rocken Espanio band Manna. Before nineteen eighty six, Fernando the lead singer. He had another band that was called Sombrero Verdan. They were influenced by a lot of the new wave stuff that was going on, especially the Police, so they already had that reggae rock fusion. They wanted to be a rock band, and if you look at the minority of rock bands in the world, they.
Sing in English. You know, she's a rich girl.
So they were just trying to imitate their idols and their bands. But then, you know, Fernando said, you know, wait a minute. You know, we live in Mexico. We should be singing about the things that we're concerned about, or that we want to talk about, or things that we love. It just made sense singing rock and Hispanoic I was part of that band.
They were looking for a new drummer.
When I was fifteen years old and I moved to Gualala Jada, that band, this bandedn't fed says, you know what, I want to start a new band, but I want to incorporate even more elements of Latin music into the pop.
Rock that we're doing.
And that's when man Now was established. Man Now is a pop rock band. But the great thing about our band is that we're very universal when it comes to music. We could play alternative stuff, reggae rock, but we can have skot punk, we can have Mexican trial music, or even Cuban music, even Mariacci. We weren't trying to invent the wheel. We just wanted to play what we wanted to hear. We grew up with the classic rock bands,
I mean the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, YouTube, Pink Floyd. On the other hand, you know, we were listening to Celia Cruz and we were listening to Bob Marley, So I think we were never afraid to try to mix it within our style of music. When you're starting a new band and you're starting to do these fusion it doesn't always work out. And he said, well, I think there's an audience out there for people that like this kind
of music. That's our first album had very little airplay, but it was an album that to record was difficult because we had a producer that obviously he believed in the band, but he changed a lot of the sound in the production.
But you know, it was the beginning of what now is Wana.
We leave that record company and we start writing music again, trying to see if there's any way, you know, if getting a record deal.
And then one day we went to a record company.
The president said that we would never make it, that, you know, rock and Espanol is just a fad, that that type of music won't last.
Fed and I we came back Garry sad.
Fernando went downstairs and he bought two Kawama beers which are like huge, huge beers. We started putting together this music and Fed stayed the whole evening writing until the early hours of the morning. And then when I woke up, he says, hey, Alex, I have the lyrics to the song.
That song basically saved our career. Turned out to be.
Ja song.
The radio station started playing it and the fans started calling.
In those days, leases who's our manager.
We had the telephone number of our office, which was just where Lisa's was living his bedroom with a telephone. When Ryan and So started getting a lot of airplane the phone started picking up, and so we started getting more calls to play.
So we said, oh, here we go.
Selmar Christ.
It took us a long time to break into Mexico City.
We're from Gualalajaa.
In our case, Mexico City was like another country and it was very hard to get in. So I said, so f many, you know, but man now was doing extremely well in the rest of the country. We would travel in this small Volkswagen comedy and sometimes, you know, we would sleep in there because we would just make enough money, you know, maybe for a motel room, and we flip a coin and see who's going to be able to sleep in the bed. But we worked so hard and we were so determined, and the buzz really
took off. And then when we come out with a dis were with the children playing, that's when we really exploded, and we did two sold out shows and at Palacelos Deportis in nineteen ninety three. No Mexican band had done that. When it comes out, that was like the album that broke us internationally.
So the band went.
From playing clubs to now playing very big venues. From there it went to baseball stadiums, football stadiums. List then to cut us up, we were already dabbing into social issues. We were talking about the very dire, dangerous situation with the environment. Yeah, there were people that knew about the environment and how important it is, and there were environmental groups,
but it wasn't so huge like it is now. Every single album we would talk about something like, for example, with the first record for that song is talking about all the homeless kids that aren't in Mexico. When we start playing in the United States and we start seeing how the Latino community has given so much. I never saw so much backlash against Mexicans, and not only Mexicans, but people from other countries or races. We were saying, well,
it's important to support the community. Lord, We've told Latinos not to be afraid. The United States is made up of immigrants. I think there's more good people in the United States than bad people. And we always said if someday we would become famous, we would want to use that platform to talk about things that we're concerned about or my eyes right now, there was this demand to see the band live. You know, we come out with
the Ryan Tour because Tinko shows thirty five. If it wouldn't have been for that song, you know, I don't think there would have been any man not.
We're part of rock and roll history. You know.
We sold out seven La Forums, which is such an iconic rock and roll venue, and it's a band that's singing in Spanish Welcome.
We really love to share our music with everybody.
So that's another way of showing also how music is so universal.
It doesn't matter what language it is.
It's about what's behind the artists or what do they give off when they're playing it. We've accomplished and achieved more than we ever dreamed about.
When you have to work so hard.
You really protect what you have and you don't take it for granted, and you cherish it every day. You're thankful every day, and every day you get up on stage and you see that we're overwhelmed by seeing all those fans and all the passion, And as long as we're healthy and we still are hungry and passionate as we are, there's there's gonna be Manah for a long time.
Listen, we just started. Listen.
This episode was produced by Gini Montalbo and edited by Sophia Palisa Ca. The Latino USA team includes Andrea Lopez Crusado, Marta Martinez, Mike Sargent, Daisy Contreras, Victoria Estrada, Renaldo Leanoz Junior, Patricia Sulvaran, with help from Raoul Perez. Our editorial director is Fernando Santos. Our director of Engineering is Stephanie Lebau. Our senior engineer is Julia Caruso. Our associate engineers are
Gabriel Lebias and jj Carubin. Our marketing manager is Luis Luna or New York Women's Foundation Fellow is Elizabeth loentdal Torres. Our theme music was composed by Zania Rubinos, I'm your host and executive producer Maria Jojosa join us on our next episode. You can also find us on your social media and I say not te rayas Ciao.
Latino USA is made possible in part by the Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change world wide, the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and Hispanics and philanthropy.
Didn't that mean lesson the ust? So you'll okay translation? This is early for musicians.