“Until I was like 15 or 16 I only listened to classical music,” says Julieta Venegas, who at 27 is one of Mexico’s few female rock stars. “I was mostly into modern Russian composers like Khachaturian and Rachmaninoff, who were really intense. And Satie, which is simple.”
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Now Venegas’s rhythmic incantations of her subtle, poetic lyrics–presented in a definitively alt-rock manner–can be heard on radio stations all over Mexico. For that she’s garnered attention as one of a small group of women making headway in the traditionally machos-only field of rock en espa–ol.
In August Guerra and Venegas were pictured on the cover of Time magazine’s Latin American edition for a story called “Era of the Rockera.” Guerra, who broke into the big time last year with her album Pa’ morirse de amor (“To Die for Love”) after ten years as a backup singer, says the De Diva Voz tour gave them a lot of exposure. “The media was very interested in our work. It was like, ‘Women are doing something.’”
