Can TikTok Bring Back This Forgotten Mexican Genre, Duranguense?
Comedian El Es Fede couldn’t figure out how to make his stand-up routines work on TikTok. Sometimes, he’d post silly storytime-style videos or he’d play with viral sounds, getting a couple thousand views. But nothing ever took off like he wished it would.
Then, in January, he decided to try something completely different. He created a hilarious sketch imagining what happened when the popular duranguense act Alacranes Músical made their hit “Por Tu Amor” in the early 2000s. He played every role himself: the singer (in a zebra shirt and cowboy hat), the saxophonist (using a sugar cane), the producer (“who’s feeling it”), and the unlikely star: the drummer “el alacrán,” whose solo on the song reminded Fede of something you’d expect from Metallica.
The video went viral. Fede went from 5,000 followers to more than 100,000 in the days that followed. Now, his original TikTok has nearly 10 million views and he’s recreated the video with other duranguense songs by acts like K-Paz de la Sierra and Horoscopos de Durango. His comment section is filled with fans hoping that the music style, a subgenre of banda, the famous Mexican ensemble style, becomes popular again. Duranguense, known by its mix of saxophone, keyboard, and tambora, peaked in the mid-2000s. Now, fans are hoping social media can help bring it back into the spotlight.
“Duranguense needs to become trendy again,” read one comment with over 20,000 likes. “It’s something we all need.”
“Make Duranguense Great Again,” read many others.
It seems to be working, and it’s not just Fede’s TikTok. Dozens of videos are slowly bringing duranguense back to the forefront — and duranguense bands of the past are jumping on the wave and making the most of it, headlining tours and taking the TikTok game into their own hands.
MONTEZ DE DURANGO consider themselves to be the creators of the genre. They tell the story of how Jose Luis Terrazas, then a label exec, had an epiphany in the year 2000: Why not combine the traditional drum-driven tamborazo from Zacatecas with technobanda to make a new sound? He called it “progressive tamborazo,” and it seemed to land.
From there, other groups started forming around Chicago. The style slowly trickled its way into the Mexican American mainstream, thanks to its distinct sound featuring melodica, synth, and sax. It wasn’t until 2002, with Montez’s song “Pasito Duranguense,” or the Durango Step, that the genre got its name. Duranguense also spawned its own peculiar, shoulder-swaying dance form, and fashion style, distinguished by sombreros with brims curved up like hardshell tacos, and ultra-pointy cowboy boots.
“I remember that I went to record stores in Chicago at the time and I heard it everywhere,’” says Pepe Garza, a music expert and TV host. He was one of the first radio programmers to play the genre outside of Chicago. “That’s when I said ‘This is something quite special, it’s bound to happen.’”
Many of the genre’s early hits involved bands recreating well-known songs, mostly ballads, and making them danceable. Montez de Durango took a slow Joan Sebastian B-side and made a hit with “Hoy Empieza Mi Tristeza,” the sister-fronted band Horoscopos de Durango reimagined bachata songs such as Aventura’s “Obsesión” and Monchy y Alexandra’s “Dos Locos,” and K-Paz de la Sierra scored a breakthrough hit when they transformed Diego Verdaguer’s “Volveré.”
The dance style, pasito duranguense — a combination of quebradita and merengue — featured a much faster pace of dance than some other grupero sounds. The dance form was born at a Mexican nightclub El Álamo de Aurora near Chicago in the early 2000s. (The club became known as the “Cathedral of Duranguense.”)
“No one will ever know exactly how it happened. We have a theory that there was a Puerto Rican who went [to El Alamo] with a Mexican girl, so they mixed merengue with norteña dance moves, and we started imitating that,” says José Luis Terrazas, Jr., Montez’s animador, or hypeman. “Next thing you know, it was like the coronavirus. It spread in just the salón, then the city. No one knows how it happened.”
Duranguense dominated the regional Mexican space for several years. Acts won Latin Grammys three consecutive years in the early 2000s, and even Gloria Trevi dabbled in duranguense, joining Horoscopos on a recreation of “Cinco Minutos.” K-Paz de la Sierra’s “No La Supiste Querer” played on screens across Mexico and the U.S. every weekday as the theme song of novela Al Diablo Con Los Guapos.
Despite the novelty and success of duranguense, Garza says other acts in regional Mexican music didn’t “take the genre seriously” because of its electronic sounds (he thinks música mexicana listeners prefer more folkloric, acoustic sounds over keyboards and synthesizers), and how silly pasito duranguense looked since it could be danced without a partner.
“Duranguense just didn’t age well,” he says.
The genre slowly started to get fewer plays on the radio and reduced TV bookings, something Garza blames on both the departure of vocalist Alfredo Ramírez from Montez, following a legal dispute with his original bandmates, and later, the murder of Sergio Gomez, who fronted K-Paz, in December 2007.
Gomez, at the time, was one of the most promising voices in duranguense. It is believed that the singer was tortured and killed by cartel Los Caballeros Templarios for performing for the criminal organization’s rivals, Los Zetas.
The guys of Montez think duranguense fizzled out because too many bands tried to tap into the style at once. “When you saturate the genre you cannot all be at the top the whole time,” says José Luis. “Eventually everything that goes up comes down. There were just too many bands.
NEARLY 20 YEARS later though, the guys of Montez, and several other groups, are hoping the genre can become as big as it once was. While some groups like Horoscopos de Durango have separated, many continue to tour nightclubs across the country and are harnessing the virality of the sound on TikTok by promoting their shows, personalities, and new music through the apps.
Early in the pandemic, Montez added a twist to the Flip the Switch challenge made viral by Drake and Quavo’s song. Instead of users switching outfits, TikTokers would come onscreen wearing duranguense-style clothes to the tune of “Pasito Duranguense.” Around that time, the group says they saw a 40 percent increase in their following count. (They now have nearly 300,000 followers on TikTok.) According to Spotify data, the band’s streaming numbers have also increased by 220 percent since 2020.
“When Myspace came out, we wanted to have the coolest page so I remember I had to freaking code,” says Daniel, the group’s drummer. “When TikTok came around during Covid lockdowns, it was only natural… the creator juice started flowing.”
Several months later, an Horoscopos de Durango song, “Antes Muerta Que Sencilla, ” went viral as background music for GRWM videos and makeup tutorials by Latina influencers, thanks to the song’s campy lyrics about getting ready before a party. (The song’s title translates to “I’d rather die, than be basic.”) The frontwomen of Horoscopos, Marisol and Vicky Terrazas, reunited to perform for trans influencer Wendy Guevara’s birthday party last year. And just last month, YouTuber Alannized hosted Marisol for a podcast episode about her solo success thanks to “Antes Muerta”’s comeback. Horoscopos de Durango has seen over a 145 percent increase in global streams on Spotify since 2020.
Since then, the genre has had numerous viral moments online: Soccer team Chivas de Guadalajara had its players walk into the locker room to K-Paz’s “Jambalaya,” racking in nearly 300,000 likes in January; Mexican short film No Me Digas Wey used Alacranes Músical’s “Por Tu Amor” during a pivotal scene that’s been played over 2.5 million times, and just last month Mazizo Musical went viral for a duranguense cover of Harry Styles’ “As It Was.”
With the “mini-boom,” as Jose Luis calls it, the guys of Montez thought it would be the ideal time to take some duranguense acts on the road.
“Back in the day when the genre was at the top, it was very difficult to gather such big names in a single event, because there was no need to,” Daniel says. But in 2022, for Durango Fest, Montez recruited Patrulla 81, the old-school group known for their cop-themed attire, the rockier Alacranes Musical, and the remaining members of K-Paz de la Sierra for the very first time.
Over the next two years, the groups hosted 32 shows. They sold nearly 70,000 tickets across the U.S., celebrating the groups’ legacies, even if some of the original members of K-Paz and Patrulla 81 are no longer alive. (Along with Gomez’s tragic 2007 death, Patrulla frontman José Angel Medina died of Covid in 2020. His son Alejandro Medina now fronts the band.)
“It was an immediate success,” says José Luis. “I was very surprised to see a lot of youngsters. I was able to see three generations. It was the whole family. I think nostalgia sells because recordar es vivir,” to reminisce is to relive.
The removal of Universal’s music from TikTok has also has also had an effect on duranguense acts like Montez and Horóscopos, but José Luis says he’s more upset about the prevalence of “pirated” versions of their songs on the app.
“[Other companies] would get a producer and say ‘Make me a duranguense album like what’s out right now.’ These guys would copy our exact notes and even our saludos so now those songs are on TikTok,” he says, “There are exact replicas of our songs. That’s the worst part, not that they took off our music.”
Brian Kaoz, a TikTok influencer and dancer based in El Paso, has attended a handful of Durango Fest shows near his hometown. In 2023, Kaoz built a following of more than 150,000 people, simply by posting videos of himself dancing to the genre. Now, he’s often invited and paid by groups to post videos of himself dancing at their events. “I love the rhythm of the music. It makes you want to move,” he says. “One of my goals when I post duranguense videos is to help it come back.”
Like Montez, El Trono de México — the band behind original hits “Te Ves Fatal” and “Almas Gemelas” — has also seen a growth in their ticket sales, thanks to social media. “When I get up on stage I’m always looking into the audience,” says frontman Lalo Ávila. “I’m very happy to see that there are people of all ages attending the show, from kids, teenagers, even viejitos. That’s when you realize we are alive.”
Over the last two years, El Trono assembled a management team of five people to run the group’s social media, tapping into trends, collaborating with influencers such as viral cumbia dancer Medio Metro, and replying to older fans’ comments on Facebook. It’s that direct engagement that Lalo says has carried them.
One of their TikTok videos followed the popular concept of asking strangers what music they’re listening to. In the video, a man wearing a duranguense hat and shades shares that he’s playing the group’s “Te Ves Fatal.” The clip has nearly 10 million views, in part because of the interviewee’s duranguense attire and unexpected song choice. In two years, the group has built a following of 1 million people on TikTok, more than half of whom are under 24 years old, according to data provided by the band to Rolling Stone.
“What has worked out the most for us is presenting ourselves in a much more natural way,” says manager Ivan Zuñiga. “Something I’ve seen is that many of the TikToks that don’t have that much interaction are the very mechanical ones, that have zero meaning. For Trono de Mexico, being natural has worked wonderfully.”
El Trono de México is currently working on its first releases since 2022. Meanwhile, Montez de Durango dropped an album of cumbia covers titled Puras Pa’ Bailar, Vol. II on Feb. 9, and plan to release their first album of duranguense songs this year, their first original LP in five years.
Can a genre resurgence really happen? Pepe Garza says it will be difficult, but it’s possible.
He suggests that groups like Montez and Trono should consider “collaborations with artists in the spotlight,” such as Grupo Frontera, which helped revitalize norteño cumbias in the last year. Other artists such as The Nice Life’s Estevie, have combined cumbia with futuristic pop sounds. The singer even teased a pop-tribalero mix on Instagram recently.
Perhaps it’ll take tapping into the nostalgic sound of duranguense, but with fresh lyricism, Garza says. The guys of Montez are open to it. “I feel like hay Montez pa’ rato,” says José Luis. “Montez is here to stay. You gotta keep adding to the legacy because, in a blink of an eye, you disappear.”
Comedian El Es Fede couldn’t figure out how to make his stand-up routines work on TikTok. Sometimes, he’d post silly storytime-style videos or he’d play with viral sounds, getting a couple thousand views. But nothing ever took off like he wished it would.
Then, in January, he decided to try something completely different. He created a hilarious sketch imagining what happened when the popular duranguense act Alacranes Músical made their hit “Por Tu Amor” in the early 2000s. He played every role himself: the singer (in a zebra shirt and cowboy hat), the saxophonist (using a sugar cane), the producer (“who’s feeling it”), and the unlikely star: the drummer “el alacrán,” whose solo on the song reminded Fede of something you’d expect from Metallica.
The video went viral. Fede went from 5,000 followers to more than 100,000 in the days that followed. Now, his original TikTok has nearly 10 million views and he’s recreated the video with other duranguense songs by acts like K-Paz de la Sierra and Horoscopos de Durango. His comment section is filled with fans hoping that the music style, a subgenre of banda, the famous Mexican ensemble style, becomes popular again. Duranguense, known by its mix of saxophone, keyboard, and tambora, peaked in the mid-2000s. Now, fans are hoping social media can help bring it back into the spotlight.
“Duranguense needs to become trendy again,” read one comment with over 20,000 likes. “It’s something we all need.”
“Make Duranguense Great Again,” read many others.
It seems to be working, and it’s not just Fede’s TikTok. Dozens of videos are slowly bringing duranguense back to the forefront — and duranguense bands of the past are jumping on the wave and making the most of it, headlining tours and taking the TikTok game into their own hands.
MONTEZ DE DURANGO consider themselves to be the creators of the genre. They tell the story of how Jose Luis Terrazas, then a label exec, had an epiphany in the year 2000: Why not combine the traditional drum-driven tamborazo from Zacatecas with technobanda to make a new sound? He called it “progressive tamborazo,” and it seemed to land.
From there, other groups started forming around Chicago. The style slowly trickled its way into the Mexican American mainstream, thanks to its distinct sound featuring melodica, synth, and sax. It wasn’t until 2002, with Montez’s song “Pasito Duranguense,” or the Durango Step, that the genre got its name. Duranguense also spawned its own peculiar, shoulder-swaying dance form, and fashion style, distinguished by sombreros with brims curved up like hardshell tacos, and ultra-pointy cowboy boots.
“I remember that I went to record stores in Chicago at the time and I heard it everywhere,’” says Pepe Garza, a music expert and TV host. He was one of the first radio programmers to play the genre outside of Chicago. “That’s when I said ‘This is something quite special, it’s bound to happen.’”
Many of the genre’s early hits involved bands recreating well-known songs, mostly ballads, and making them danceable. Montez de Durango took a slow Joan Sebastian B-side and made a hit with “Hoy Empieza Mi Tristeza,” the sister-fronted band Horoscopos de Durango reimagined bachata songs such as Aventura’s “Obsesión” and Monchy y Alexandra’s “Dos Locos,” and K-Paz de la Sierra scored a breakthrough hit when they transformed Diego Verdaguer’s “Volveré.”
The dance style, pasito duranguense — a combination of quebradita and merengue — featured a much faster pace of dance than some other grupero sounds. The dance form was born at a Mexican nightclub El Álamo de Aurora near Chicago in the early 2000s. (The club became known as the “Cathedral of Duranguense.”)
“No one will ever know exactly how it happened. We have a theory that there was a Puerto Rican who went [to El Alamo] with a Mexican girl, so they mixed merengue with norteña dance moves, and we started imitating that,” says José Luis Terrazas, Jr., Montez’s animador, or hypeman. “Next thing you know, it was like the coronavirus. It spread in just the salón, then the city. No one knows how it happened.”
Duranguense dominated the regional Mexican space for several years. Acts won Latin Grammys three consecutive years in the early 2000s, and even Gloria Trevi dabbled in duranguense, joining Horoscopos on a recreation of “Cinco Minutos.” K-Paz de la Sierra’s “No La Supiste Querer” played on screens across Mexico and the U.S. every weekday as the theme song of novela Al Diablo Con Los Guapos.
Despite the novelty and success of duranguense, Garza says other acts in regional Mexican music didn’t “take the genre seriously” because of its electronic sounds (he thinks música mexicana listeners prefer more folkloric, acoustic sounds over keyboards and synthesizers), and how silly pasito duranguense looked since it could be danced without a partner.
“Duranguense just didn’t age well,” he says.
The genre slowly started to get fewer plays on the radio and reduced TV bookings, something Garza blames on both the departure of vocalist Alfredo Ramírez from Montez, following a legal dispute with his original bandmates, and later, the murder of Sergio Gomez, who fronted K-Paz, in December 2007.
Gomez, at the time, was one of the most promising voices in duranguense. It is believed that the singer was tortured and killed by cartel Los Caballeros Templarios for performing for the criminal organization’s rivals, Los Zetas.
The guys of Montez think duranguense fizzled out because too many bands tried to tap into the style at once. “When you saturate the genre you cannot all be at the top the whole time,” says José Luis. “Eventually everything that goes up comes down. There were just too many bands.
NEARLY 20 YEARS later though, the guys of Montez, and several other groups, are hoping the genre can become as big as it once was. While some groups like Horoscopos de Durango have separated, many continue to tour nightclubs across the country and are harnessing the virality of the sound on TikTok by promoting their shows, personalities, and new music through the apps.
Early in the pandemic, Montez added a twist to the Flip the Switch challenge made viral by Drake and Quavo’s song. Instead of users switching outfits, TikTokers would come onscreen wearing duranguense-style clothes to the tune of “Pasito Duranguense.” Around that time, the group says they saw a 40 percent increase in their following count. (They now have nearly 300,000 followers on TikTok.) According to Spotify data, the band’s streaming numbers have also increased by 220 percent since 2020.
“When Myspace came out, we wanted to have the coolest page so I remember I had to freaking code,” says Daniel, the group’s drummer. “When TikTok came around during Covid lockdowns, it was only natural… the creator juice started flowing.”
Several months later, an Horoscopos de Durango song, “Antes Muerta Que Sencilla, ” went viral as background music for GRWM videos and makeup tutorials by Latina influencers, thanks to the song’s campy lyrics about getting ready before a party. (The song’s title translates to “I’d rather die, than be basic.”) The frontwomen of Horoscopos, Marisol and Vicky Terrazas, reunited to perform for trans influencer Wendy Guevara’s birthday party last year. And just last month, YouTuber Alannized hosted Marisol for a podcast episode about her solo success thanks to “Antes Muerta”’s comeback. Horoscopos de Durango has seen over a 145 percent increase in global streams on Spotify since 2020.
Since then, the genre has had numerous viral moments online: Soccer team Chivas de Guadalajara had its players walk into the locker room to K-Paz’s “Jambalaya,” racking in nearly 300,000 likes in January; Mexican short film No Me Digas Wey used Alacranes Músical’s “Por Tu Amor” during a pivotal scene that’s been played over 2.5 million times, and just last month Mazizo Musical went viral for a duranguense cover of Harry Styles’ “As It Was.”
With the “mini-boom,” as Jose Luis calls it, the guys of Montez thought it would be the ideal time to take some duranguense acts on the road.
“Back in the day when the genre was at the top, it was very difficult to gather such big names in a single event, because there was no need to,” Daniel says. But in 2022, for Durango Fest, Montez recruited Patrulla 81, the old-school group known for their cop-themed attire, the rockier Alacranes Musical, and the remaining members of K-Paz de la Sierra for the very first time.
Over the next two years, the groups hosted 32 shows. They sold nearly 70,000 tickets across the U.S., celebrating the groups’ legacies, even if some of the original members of K-Paz and Patrulla 81 are no longer alive. (Along with Gomez’s tragic 2007 death, Patrulla frontman José Angel Medina died of Covid in 2020. His son Alejandro Medina now fronts the band.)
“It was an immediate success,” says José Luis. “I was very surprised to see a lot of youngsters. I was able to see three generations. It was the whole family. I think nostalgia sells because recordar es vivir,” to reminisce is to relive.
The removal of Universal’s music from TikTok has also has also had an effect on duranguense acts like Montez and Horóscopos, but José Luis says he’s more upset about the prevalence of “pirated” versions of their songs on the app.
“[Other companies] would get a producer and say ‘Make me a duranguense album like what’s out right now.’ These guys would copy our exact notes and even our saludos so now those songs are on TikTok,” he says, “There are exact replicas of our songs. That’s the worst part, not that they took off our music.”
Brian Kaoz, a TikTok influencer and dancer based in El Paso, has attended a handful of Durango Fest shows near his hometown. In 2023, Kaoz built a following of more than 150,000 people, simply by posting videos of himself dancing to the genre. Now, he’s often invited and paid by groups to post videos of himself dancing at their events. “I love the rhythm of the music. It makes you want to move,” he says. “One of my goals when I post duranguense videos is to help it come back.”
Like Montez, El Trono de México — the band behind original hits “Te Ves Fatal” and “Almas Gemelas” — has also seen a growth in their ticket sales, thanks to social media. “When I get up on stage I’m always looking into the audience,” says frontman Lalo Ávila. “I’m very happy to see that there are people of all ages attending the show, from kids, teenagers, even viejitos. That’s when you realize we are alive.”
Over the last two years, El Trono assembled a management team of five people to run the group’s social media, tapping into trends, collaborating with influencers such as viral cumbia dancer Medio Metro, and replying to older fans’ comments on Facebook. It’s that direct engagement that Lalo says has carried them.
One of their TikTok videos followed the popular concept of asking strangers what music they’re listening to. In the video, a man wearing a duranguense hat and shades shares that he’s playing the group’s “Te Ves Fatal.” The clip has nearly 10 million views, in part because of the interviewee’s duranguense attire and unexpected song choice. In two years, the group has built a following of 1 million people on TikTok, more than half of whom are under 24 years old, according to data provided by the band to Rolling Stone.
“What has worked out the most for us is presenting ourselves in a much more natural way,” says manager Ivan Zuñiga. “Something I’ve seen is that many of the TikToks that don’t have that much interaction are the very mechanical ones, that have zero meaning. For Trono de Mexico, being natural has worked wonderfully.”
El Trono de México is currently working on its first releases since 2022. Meanwhile, Montez de Durango dropped an album of cumbia covers titled Puras Pa’ Bailar, Vol. II on Feb. 9, and plan to release their first album of duranguense songs this year, their first original LP in five years.
Can a genre resurgence really happen? Pepe Garza says it will be difficult, but it’s possible.
He suggests that groups like Montez and Trono should consider “collaborations with artists in the spotlight,” such as Grupo Frontera, which helped revitalize norteño cumbias in the last year. Other artists such as The Nice Life’s Estevie, have combined cumbia with futuristic pop sounds. The singer even teased a pop-tribalero mix on Instagram recently.
Perhaps it’ll take tapping into the nostalgic sound of duranguense, but with fresh lyricism, Garza says. The guys of Montez are open to it. “I feel like hay Montez pa’ rato,” says José Luis. “Montez is here to stay. You gotta keep adding to the legacy because, in a blink of an eye, you disappear.”
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