Majo Aguilar Reflects on Family, Fearlessness, and Finding Her Voice Through Her New Album ‘Mariachi Mío’

A thick silence surrounds the space between her words. Majo Aguilar does not speak to entertain or to fill time. Her voice carries the weight of generations, of mariachi horns echoing through plazas and late-night stages. There is no performance in her tone. Only clarity. Her new album, Mariachi Mío, does not arrive with pretense. It does not knock. It enters already belonging to a legacy that was never hers to claim but always hers to carry.

Born into one of Mexico’s most recognized musical dynasties, Majo does not linger on surnames or surnames’ shadows. She stands inside tradition without replicating it. “I’m constantly searching,” she tells BELatina in an exclusive interview. “Searching for how I want to reach people, for what my heart wants to express, and each time with fewer restraints. That freedom matters because restraints kill creativity.”

There is no gimmick here. There is no nostalgia. Rather, Mariachi Mío is a record of process and place. And it is wholly hers.

For Majo Aguilar, Her Roots Are Not Shackles

Aguilar never weaponizes her lineage. She carries it like a musician carries a tune: deliberately. She doesn’t worship it, all she does is moves through it.

Mexican music, she explains, shaped her ear before she ever chose it as a path. “It impacted my heart. It shaped how I understand music. There’s pride in that — pride in being Mexican, pride in our roots.” When she wrote Piel Azteca, she says she was overtaken by emotion. Not sentimentality. Not memory. Something else. A responsibility to honor and a desire to create.

Her approach to performing is no different. The stage, for her, is not a stage. It’s a continuation of something passed down. It is something felt, not rehearsed. She credits her family, yes, but speaks of others too. José Alfredo Jiménez. Vicente Fernández. For her, the idea is that mariachi belongs to people, not to a person. “It’s not mine,” she says. “It was their work. I’m lucky to interpret it.”

Reinvention Without Permission

There was no boardroom strategy behind Mariachi Mío. No lineup of hits awaiting packaging. The album did not wait for consensus. It happened in motion, built in Puerto Escondido, Monterrey, New York City, Mexico City. Recorded with producers who have spent decades in the industry and others who have barely begun. Some songs grew out of violins and trumpets. Others brought in rap and flamenco, corridos and huapangos.

“This album came together naturally,” she says. “It wasn’t about selecting tracks or hitting deadlines. It was spontaneous.” She released 30 songs last year, another 30 the year before. But this, she insists, was different. Looser. More honest.

She was not concerned with reactions. That came later. “Maybe I worried people would ask, ‘Why are you mixing genres? You only sing mariachi.’ But I believe that when you do something honestly, not to chase trends but because you love it, that honesty reaches people.”

A New Sound Without Abandoning the Old

There is no manifesto in her words. No declaration of revolution. What Majo Aguilar proposes is less theatrical. She wants mariachi to live. Not as a museum piece but as something that can evolve. She does not decorate this idea with metaphors or marketing. She speaks of mariachi the way someone speaks of water. Essential. Enduring.

Now, she wants young Latinas listening for the first time to feel what she feels, which lies in the strength of 12 instruments, the pull of a Mexican orchestra, the weight and lift of trumpets arranged like a heartbeat. “I want them to feel power. But in power, there is calm. When it comes from a healthy place, power gives you security, confidence, hope.”

Her ambition does not seek approval. It seeks connection. The kind that doesn’t depend on age, geography, or genre. “That award”—she’s referring to her win at Premio Lo Nuestro for Female Mexican Artist of the Year—“was beautiful because it meant I was connecting with people. That’s all I want. That’s the real magic.”

What she’s creating isn’t a new genre. It’s not even a fusion. It’s not a product of algorithms or metrics. It is a declaration of presence — hers. She calls it Mariachi Mío. Because it is.