MEXICO CITY — Dominican singer-songwriter Alex Ferreira is about to debut at the Vive Latino Festival that he knows and admires so much.
“I’m super excited,” he said in a recent interview in Mexico City. “I know perfectly well what Vive represents for Mexico City as a festival, according to me it is the festival of the city. I have participated in several Vives as a guest, with Ximena Sariñana, last year I played with Gepe, with Daniela Spalla, with Elsa and Elmar, but they had never given a ball to me”.
Ferreira will appear on Saturday afternoon at the Intolerant Tent and announced that they will have guests, although he did not reveal who they will be. On Saturday they will also perform at Vive La Santa Cecilia, Interior Astronomy, Carla Morrison, Café Tacvba and Alemán.
Sunday will continue with the presentations of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Enjambre, Elsa and Elmar, Guitarricadelafuente and Gayle.
Ferreira will present live his most recent single, “De verdad”, as well as songs from his most recent album “En lo que llega la primavera” from 2022.
In “De verdad”, whose video is about to be released, Ferreira talks about not wasting time in a relationship, a message that can be extended to not wasting time trapped in social networks or procrastinating through life.
“We are in the era of wasting time on stupid things,” he said. “Certainty is a lie, a hologram, the only certain thing is the present or death, but when one is certain in another person, in sharing, well I think many people can identify with that.”
“En lo que llega la primavera” includes the song “La verbena y el moriviví”, whose title took the name of a plant from the Dominican Republic that is sensitive to touch, for what Ferreira considers “magical”.
“If you touch it, it contracts, it seems to wither, the plant shakes… They call it moriviví because the plant dies and lives again,” he said. “We recorded it on my birthday, it’s a super special song.”
On March 23 Ferreira will be 40 years old. “Age only matters if you are a wine or a cheese,” he said excitedly about entering the famous fourth floor. “I don’t usually think about it much, in my head I have an emotional age of 23 and intelligence of 18″, he added jokingly.
Ferreira is a self-taught musician, he grew up listening to Jorge Drexler, Caetano Veloso, El Kanka, Pedro Guerra. He has been living in Mexico for a decade in which he has also been in close contact with regional Mexican music, something that is reflected in his song “Amor de paso.”
“With great respect, I would not call it a ranchera, but it is true that the years that I have been here in Mexico I have listened to José Alfredo Jiménez, corridos, now I really like corridos lying down,” he said.
“My project is a bit of a degenerate project, it has no genre, I am a singer-songwriter at the end of the day, the important thing is the song, how to dress it. In that sense, I take the liberty of even using, of course, rhythmic Caribbean tropical elements, as well as things that are more Anglo-Saxon, or European, electronics, rock”, he pointed out.
The variety of Ferreira’s tastes is evident in “Como una flecha”, which has hints of blues, and in “Hubo algo”, a song about the gray zone between love and friendship, influenced by disco music. “Hubo algo” was made by her in collaboration with the Mexican singer Vanessa Zamora, from Tijuana.
“He helped me rescue her because I didn’t like the song until she sang and we did that collaboration that I’m very fond of,” he said. “On social networks they call it the song of ‘the almost something’, it has that phrase ‘they were never anything, but there was always something’, they are those relationships that never come to fruition, but are always there.”
( Marta Milans: ‘Family is the great message of Shazam! Fury of the gods! )
The Mexican singer-songwriter Silvana Estrada is his guest for “Ni una cosa ni la otra”.
“She is an influence on me, my friends are already my influence, that’s incredible,” he said. “I love her, I adore her. The plan was not for her to be in the disco, but she did something that was very noticeable that it was her. Silvana has so much personality and so much presence that when she sings it’s very difficult that she seems like a choir, it’s Silvana and that’s it, she has that super recognizable, beautiful and prodigious voice”.
Ferreira recently performed at the Isle of Light Festival in the Dominican Republic. After her concert at Vive Latino, she will perform in Tijuana and San Luis Potosí in Mexico, as well as at the Estéreo Picnic Festival in Bogotá. Later she will travel to Chile and Argentina.
“This year there is a lot of work,” he said. “I’m going to be releasing music every two months.”
