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The best drummer in the world and bandas de rock femeninas

The Drumeo Award for the Best Rock Drummer of 2023 went to a 22-year-old Mexican woman, Paulina Villarreal, drummer for the Mexican rock band The Warning,  a trio of three sisters who have rocketed to the top of the Mexican rock world.

Let that sink in for a minute. A 22-year-old Mexican woman has joined a legendary group that includes the likes of Questlove, Chris “Daddy” Dave, Aaron Spears, and Aaron Sterling.  She now sits on top of the very male-dominated rock drummers fraternity. 

Rock drumming is male territory and usually American territory. What this says is that Mexican women are shattering glass ceilings in music and this is a big one. 

So who is Paulina Villarreal and The Warning? The Warning is a Mexican rock band formed in 2013 by three sisters: Daniela, Paulina, and Alejandra Villarreal when they were barely teens. They gained popularity through their YouTube channel where they posted covers of rock songs. The band’s music style is a mix of hard rock and heavy metal, a difficult mix for a drummer. They have released original music and have performed at music festivals and events throughout Mexico, often headlining. 

Paulina-Villarreal-1

Today the bi-lingual trio has over a million monthly listeners on Spotify and is popular in both the Mexican and the US rock world.  Drumeo’s Award to Villarreal is more testimony that the three young women are among the most talented rock musicians in the world. The fact that they are Mexican is just icing on the cake.

Still, Mexican women are still pretty invisible in Mexican rock music despite The Warning’s success.  But other glass ceilings have been broken. The barrier against female mariachis is long gone. Same for banda -Billboard listed 30 female-led banda bands and Banda Las Angelinas from  Los Angeles is a locally popular all-female banda group with a growing audience. Currently, popular female ranchero bands include Tijuana No!, Las Ultrasónicas, and Descartes a Kant. 

I for one am very happy to see Mexican women joining the boys on stage. I have stopped covering local music festivals and country fair concerts because they are all the same 18 guys with hats and boots and accordions and tubas. I like the music – banda is lots of fun, even when played at 115 decibels – but it gets boring without the color that women bring to the bandstand. So congratulations to Paulina Villarreal and The Warning. May many more bandas de rock femeninas follow  you.

Patrick O’Heffernan, PhD., is a music journalist and radio broadcaster based in Los Angeles, California, with a global following. His two weekly radio programs, MusicFridayLive! and MusicaFusionLA are heard nationwide and in the UK. He focuses on two music specialties: emerging bands in all genres, and the growing LA-based ALM genre (American Latino Music) that combines rock and rap, blues and jazz and pop with music from Latin America like cumbia, banda, jarocho and mariachi. He also likes to watch his friend drag race.

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