Reyna Tropical Return To Celebrate the Afro-Latine Diaspora on New Single "Lo Siento"

Reyna Tropical has shared a new song with the release “Lo Siento,” along with a date at the Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles on Thursday, Dec. 15. The track is the first since the tragic passing of producer Sumohair (Nectali Diaz), who along with Fabi Reyna created the project out of a shared passion for the music and culture that exists across the Latine diaspora.

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But Reyna’s hard choice to keep the mantle of Reyna Tropical going is owed to exactly how much love has coalesced around Diaz’s memory and the music he’d left behind. Taking it as a sign that the Afro-Mexican solidarity they sought to nurture now existed outside of Reyna Tropical, and for Reyna, the best way to honor him and his hopes for the band was to keep making music.

On the band’s latest “Lo Siento,” they wrestle with feelings of being Mexican ex-pats and the sense of disconnection that can inspire within. Textured with Afro-Caribbean drums and lush guitars the track buzzes with the kind of insatiable energy that seems to rumble on all Reyna Tropical songs. But underneath all those buoyant tones and rotund beats, the band hones in on the fact that you need to sit with the tension of being “in between.” Between two countries, two cultures, two identities — and sometimes it’s not even so binary.

Instead, “Lo Siento,” with its assuaging rhythms washing over you, tries to reframe the perception that two sides must be at odds with the other. Offering up a different way to look at yourself and how you interact with all the multitudes that exist among Afro-Latine people both still in their home country and those making homes abroad. That you can be both here and there, living intentionally and meaningfully, spreading that self-same love that exists within us all.

“Reyna Tropical has always been a vehicle to explore our connection to the people, land, and ancestors. Everything changed for us when we became aware of our intuitive technologies and the abundance of knowledge that lives internally,” the band said of the single. “The juxtaposition of this awareness while existing within the Latine diaspora is what inspired us to write ‘Lo Siento.’ This song is offered as a light for all of us who are in between to let our minds rest, listen to our intuition, and move with the full feeling of being both de aqui y de aya. When you lead with your body rather than your mind how does trust shift within yourself, community, land, and ancestors?”