Reyna Tropical Releases “Ya Va Pasar,” Honoring Memory of Member Sumo

Watching Reyna Tropical evolve over the years felt like watching two best friends, connected almost in a psychic way through their deeply personal lyrics and love for their heritage. They have embodied the word tropical to its very core, with breezy beats, upbeat guitar riffs, and psychedelic  electro-cumbia sounds. 

For years, the duo was made up of Mexican expats Fabi Reyna and Nectali Díaz, known as Sumo.  Reyna is the founder of She Shreds Media (formerly She Shreds Magazine) and has performed and provided backing vocals and guitar for acts such as Chain and The Gang, Priests, Sávila, Raveena, and Sleater-Kinney. Diaz, meanwhile, played a pivotal role in the vibrant underground Latine nightclub scene of Los Angeles. He not only co-founded Dinamita, one of the city’s very first Cumbia parties, but also helped start Papaya Club, a pioneering collective that was dedicated to raising awareness and collecting vital funds for marginalized and underrepresented communities across Latin America. 

Reyna Tropical’s mission has always been about deepening their connection with both the people and the landscapes of the diaspora  — from Colombia, Puerto Rico, and of course, their native home of Mexico. Their desire to create “music with a purpose” has guided their celebration of queerness, multi-racial identities and their amplification of the experiences of women and gender expansive individuals. Together, the duo came up with the band’s distinctive motto: “Queer Love & Afro-Mexico” which has been at the heart of their music since the band formed in 2017.

But now, Reyna istrusting herself and her own creative vision more than ever. In July of 2022, Sumo passed away suddenly at the age of 42. “The thing that helped me continue to move forward is to just continue to be me. People definitely lose themselves after something like this.And I feel like I did, too. Your whole system gets jumbled. You’re like, ‘What happened, where am I? Who am I?’ But grief isn’t just sad. It’s not just pain, it’s also creation. So I think grief is a powerful energy,” Reyna says. 

This week, she is releasing Reyna Tropical’s newest single “Ya Va Pasar.” She wrote the song using one of Sumo’s beats, with production by one of his friends and collaborators, Captain Planet. Rolling Stone sat down with Fabi to talk about her new single, the future of Reyna Tropical, and how her intuition, spirituality, and relationships have been preparing her for physical absences in order to move forward through hardships and new creative visions.

How has Reyna Tropical and your vision for your music evolved over the years?
Trust. One reason why I trust music so much is because I’ve always gone into projects committing to having no real vision and just agreeing to let it shape me. When I met Sumo and started playing music with him, I didn’t even think it was something I liked at all. I actually really hated singing at first. So something that I thought at first was going to be nothing became this whole universe and now the vision feels huge and never ending. I still feel like it’s shaping me, and that I’m not forcing it to be anything it’s not. It has taken on a body of its own. It’s queer love for Mexico at its core. 

Why did you hate singing?
I had been playing guitar for most of my life. When Reyna Tropical was becoming a more serious thing, I was in the middle of running She Shreds, which is a magazine literally dedicated to the craft of guitar playing, so my whole thing was… I’m a guitar player. I was really fighting against the fact that I felt like at the time, most of the mainstream media featured women solely playing the guitar without singing at all. So I wanted to be seen, and change that whole narrative but I still didn’t want people to see me as a singer and I was really adamant about that. Singing and performing is a whole other art. You’re guiding the audience and the energy of a room, and I hadn’t done that before as a guitar player.

What I love about the combination of singing and playing the guitar is that when I’m up there performing, I’m just feeling whatever I feel on stage and it doesn’t have to be done perfectly. Sometimes that means fucking up the solo, and sometimes that means not playing guitar at all or barely singing. And that’s what I appreciate, is the live moment of experimentation that intuitively happens when I’m performing as a singer and a guitar player.

I want to ask about Sumo, and what that loss meant to you personally.
The loss of Sumo was the first big loss that I’ve had in my life, which also happened to be with the closest person in my life. I can’t imagine ever being closer to anyone, and it’s a different closeness than with a parent or even a romantic partnership. When you’re making music with someone, you’re writing your own language together. You’re communicating in ways that are beyond this existence and doing the impossible together, even if you don’t understand what’s happening because that’s what your union inspires. So Sumo’s physical loss was, in a sense, like something I had been training for. I know how to communicate with him, and I miss him. I miss all kinds of things about how we existed on this Earth together and I always will. 

There are many things about it that feel so peaceful, and there’s so much that I feel as joy about being able to communicate with this whole Earth in a deeper, more meaningful way now. Before this loss, I thought I was already in real communication with the elements in my own spiritual practice, but now it feels even deeper. It’s hard to describe because I feel like it’s a language that we almost feel ashamed to talk about. Like, somehow it’s not respected or we’re made to feel crazy to think that we could talk to a tree or feel someone’s spirit in the air, but it’s important to open that up within ourselves and to really understand that life is beyond human because it makes death actually feel so free. 

Have there been any moments since his passing that you thought about not making music without him?
Definitely. There were whole months after he passed where I was trying to settle and start feeling like myself again that were incredibly difficult. I felt like I was me, but that I was also sort of him, too. My whole system was really confused, you know? I got sick, and I couldn’t think straight, I could barely remember the words to my own songs, and I think I stopped trusting myself. I started to get imposter syndrome which I never get, and just started to feel insecure.

For several months I didn’t know how to perform on stage without him, or how to write music without him. He always trusted that I would do what was best for both of us. So that snapped me out of my imposter syndrome, but it left me with the question of, “How is this going to continue? Is this fair, is this what he wants?” But the answer was always a resounding yes.

It’s weird to say, but I almost feel like he always wanted it to just be me. He never really liked being in photos and he didn’t like performing. Once we even talked about maybe it should just be me performing but we will still write together. So in a way, it almost felt natural to carry on in this iteration. I was with him three days before he passed, and we had just finished talking about everything we wanted to do. It was so wild, even the Friday before he passed, we finished our last song for an album we wrote together and everything just felt perfect and finished. We did everything that we could have imagined we wanted to do. All of our dreams came true. We talked about that all the time. Every time we finished a show we would be like, “Wow, I cannot believe this is our life. I can’t believe we’re in Puerto Rico and that we sold out a show here, just you and me — no marketing, no manager. Just you and me and the music we make sold out. All these shows across the world.” We felt our ancestors, we felt queer love, we felt so grateful. 

Can you tell me a little more about “Ya Va Pasar” and what it means to you?
This is the first song that I wrote after Sumo passed. About five months after his transition, I had gotten really sick to the point of needing to cancel a slew of shows, including a celebration of life event I was organizing in Los Angeles. On Christmas day, I sat with my looper to try and write something and nothing came. This isn’t an instrument that I used in Reyna Tropical or with Sumo so I came into this more so curious about how I was going to rewrite myself, already having this idea that I couldn’t do Reyna Tropical by myself. 

Flipping through the saved sounds on my looper I came across one of Sumo’s beats. I was so shocked to hear it, I literally gasped out loud because it was the last thing I expected to hear on this particular machine. As soon as that beat came on, I immediately started writing layer after layer — first the keys, bass, then the guitars, and finally the vocals and harmonies. It felt just like when Sumo and I would write together, totally in the moment and improvised. I remember when I was recording the keyboard,I instinctually looked behind me and, noticing he wasn’t there to give me the reassurance I would typically look for when recording my parts, I started to just cry. I cried because I missed him so much and wished he was there but also because I actually felt him there. It felt like we were writing together, except instead of looking to him for confidence I was trusting myself. I felt my fear dim, and clarity came through. From then on, I feel like I’ve gone through different levels of fear but always with the clarity that I am Reyna Tropical and in the process these insecurities will pass and guide me to the next version of myself.

What is the significance of releasing this on November 16th?
November 16th is the day Sumo was born and I decided that every year on his birthday, I’m going to release a new song. It might not be year round that he will be at the forefront of my conversations, my memories or my mind, but once a year, I’m giving myself the space and opportunity to indulge in my memories of us, and create something for people to continue to remember the love that started all of this.

What has it been like touring the last several months without the physical presence of Sumo? 
He’s physically not here but he is definitely present. I am eternally grateful to be surrounded by extremely talented and supportive friends and family who are either with me on stage or helping on the side of the stage. I travel with a crew now! When Sumo and I performed together it was always about inviting our ancestors to the stage, channeling their messages and honoring them. I feel like he really doesn’t miss an opportunity to come through now that he’s an ancestor. For a long time I didn’t know if I would be able to find someone who I trusted as much as him to ground me on stage and keep me safe, but now I see this more as an opportunity to collaborate with folks and build powerful energy together. In the last months I’ve been touring with my partner who is one of the best herbalists and herbal educators on the east coast, founder of Herban Cura. At every single show we play we make time to give offerings to the land, and harvest plants from these lands to bring on stage. 

Do you have a vision of how you want to continue making music moving forward?
I don’t want to lose the relationship I have with music, and the spontaneity of what makes me have fun. The band has always just been that way, and no one’s gonna tell me to do things differently. Sumo and I were really, really strict about that. We’d be like…”I don’t fucking care what that person wants me to do.” Someone would be like, “hey, I want you to play this way” and we’d say, “We’re not going to do that and here’s what we’re going to do instead!” So I want to keep asking for what I want to do. I want to keep asking venues to take care of black and brown people and our black and brown audiences. I want to keep asking to make sure venues have queer people on staff and working our shows and also to make sure that queer people are going to be safe and cared for in those spaces.

Anything you’d like to say about any upcoming new music?
Next year Reyna Tropical will be releasing our first full length album and the first body of work since the Sol y Lluvia EP in 2019. Personally, I think it’s the best music I’ve ever made and I literally cannot wait for the world to hear it!

Watching Reyna Tropical evolve over the years felt like watching two best friends, connected almost in a psychic way through their deeply personal lyrics and love for their heritage. They have embodied the word tropical to its very core, with breezy beats, upbeat guitar riffs, and psychedelic  electro-cumbia sounds. 

For years, the duo was made up of Mexican expats Fabi Reyna and Nectali Díaz, known as Sumo.  Reyna is the founder of She Shreds Media (formerly She Shreds Magazine) and has performed and provided backing vocals and guitar for acts such as Chain and The Gang, Priests, Sávila, Raveena, and Sleater-Kinney. Diaz, meanwhile, played a pivotal role in the vibrant underground Latine nightclub scene of Los Angeles. He not only co-founded Dinamita, one of the city’s very first Cumbia parties, but also helped start Papaya Club, a pioneering collective that was dedicated to raising awareness and collecting vital funds for marginalized and underrepresented communities across Latin America. 

Reyna Tropical’s mission has always been about deepening their connection with both the people and the landscapes of the diaspora  — from Colombia, Puerto Rico, and of course, their native home of Mexico. Their desire to create “music with a purpose” has guided their celebration of queerness, multi-racial identities and their amplification of the experiences of women and gender expansive individuals. Together, the duo came up with the band’s distinctive motto: “Queer Love & Afro-Mexico” which has been at the heart of their music since the band formed in 2017.

But now, Reyna istrusting herself and her own creative vision more than ever. In July of 2022, Sumo passed away suddenly at the age of 42. “The thing that helped me continue to move forward is to just continue to be me. People definitely lose themselves after something like this.And I feel like I did, too. Your whole system gets jumbled. You’re like, ‘What happened, where am I? Who am I?’ But grief isn’t just sad. It’s not just pain, it’s also creation. So I think grief is a powerful energy,” Reyna says. 

This week, she is releasing Reyna Tropical’s newest single “Ya Va Pasar.” She wrote the song using one of Sumo’s beats, with production by one of his friends and collaborators, Captain Planet. Rolling Stone sat down with Fabi to talk about her new single, the future of Reyna Tropical, and how her intuition, spirituality, and relationships have been preparing her for physical absences in order to move forward through hardships and new creative visions.

How has Reyna Tropical and your vision for your music evolved over the years?
Trust. One reason why I trust music so much is because I’ve always gone into projects committing to having no real vision and just agreeing to let it shape me. When I met Sumo and started playing music with him, I didn’t even think it was something I liked at all. I actually really hated singing at first. So something that I thought at first was going to be nothing became this whole universe and now the vision feels huge and never ending. I still feel like it’s shaping me, and that I’m not forcing it to be anything it’s not. It has taken on a body of its own. It’s queer love for Mexico at its core. 

Why did you hate singing?
I had been playing guitar for most of my life. When Reyna Tropical was becoming a more serious thing, I was in the middle of running She Shreds, which is a magazine literally dedicated to the craft of guitar playing, so my whole thing was… I’m a guitar player. I was really fighting against the fact that I felt like at the time, most of the mainstream media featured women solely playing the guitar without singing at all. So I wanted to be seen, and change that whole narrative but I still didn’t want people to see me as a singer and I was really adamant about that. Singing and performing is a whole other art. You’re guiding the audience and the energy of a room, and I hadn’t done that before as a guitar player.

What I love about the combination of singing and playing the guitar is that when I’m up there performing, I’m just feeling whatever I feel on stage and it doesn’t have to be done perfectly. Sometimes that means fucking up the solo, and sometimes that means not playing guitar at all or barely singing. And that’s what I appreciate, is the live moment of experimentation that intuitively happens when I’m performing as a singer and a guitar player.

I want to ask about Sumo, and what that loss meant to you personally.
The loss of Sumo was the first big loss that I’ve had in my life, which also happened to be with the closest person in my life. I can’t imagine ever being closer to anyone, and it’s a different closeness than with a parent or even a romantic partnership. When you’re making music with someone, you’re writing your own language together. You’re communicating in ways that are beyond this existence and doing the impossible together, even if you don’t understand what’s happening because that’s what your union inspires. So Sumo’s physical loss was, in a sense, like something I had been training for. I know how to communicate with him, and I miss him. I miss all kinds of things about how we existed on this Earth together and I always will. 

There are many things about it that feel so peaceful, and there’s so much that I feel as joy about being able to communicate with this whole Earth in a deeper, more meaningful way now. Before this loss, I thought I was already in real communication with the elements in my own spiritual practice, but now it feels even deeper. It’s hard to describe because I feel like it’s a language that we almost feel ashamed to talk about. Like, somehow it’s not respected or we’re made to feel crazy to think that we could talk to a tree or feel someone’s spirit in the air, but it’s important to open that up within ourselves and to really understand that life is beyond human because it makes death actually feel so free. 

Have there been any moments since his passing that you thought about not making music without him?
Definitely. There were whole months after he passed where I was trying to settle and start feeling like myself again that were incredibly difficult. I felt like I was me, but that I was also sort of him, too. My whole system was really confused, you know? I got sick, and I couldn’t think straight, I could barely remember the words to my own songs, and I think I stopped trusting myself. I started to get imposter syndrome which I never get, and just started to feel insecure.

For several months I didn’t know how to perform on stage without him, or how to write music without him. He always trusted that I would do what was best for both of us. So that snapped me out of my imposter syndrome, but it left me with the question of, “How is this going to continue? Is this fair, is this what he wants?” But the answer was always a resounding yes.

It’s weird to say, but I almost feel like he always wanted it to just be me. He never really liked being in photos and he didn’t like performing. Once we even talked about maybe it should just be me performing but we will still write together. So in a way, it almost felt natural to carry on in this iteration. I was with him three days before he passed, and we had just finished talking about everything we wanted to do. It was so wild, even the Friday before he passed, we finished our last song for an album we wrote together and everything just felt perfect and finished. We did everything that we could have imagined we wanted to do. All of our dreams came true. We talked about that all the time. Every time we finished a show we would be like, “Wow, I cannot believe this is our life. I can’t believe we’re in Puerto Rico and that we sold out a show here, just you and me — no marketing, no manager. Just you and me and the music we make sold out. All these shows across the world.” We felt our ancestors, we felt queer love, we felt so grateful. 

Can you tell me a little more about “Ya Va Pasar” and what it means to you?
This is the first song that I wrote after Sumo passed. About five months after his transition, I had gotten really sick to the point of needing to cancel a slew of shows, including a celebration of life event I was organizing in Los Angeles. On Christmas day, I sat with my looper to try and write something and nothing came. This isn’t an instrument that I used in Reyna Tropical or with Sumo so I came into this more so curious about how I was going to rewrite myself, already having this idea that I couldn’t do Reyna Tropical by myself. 

Flipping through the saved sounds on my looper I came across one of Sumo’s beats. I was so shocked to hear it, I literally gasped out loud because it was the last thing I expected to hear on this particular machine. As soon as that beat came on, I immediately started writing layer after layer — first the keys, bass, then the guitars, and finally the vocals and harmonies. It felt just like when Sumo and I would write together, totally in the moment and improvised. I remember when I was recording the keyboard,I instinctually looked behind me and, noticing he wasn’t there to give me the reassurance I would typically look for when recording my parts, I started to just cry. I cried because I missed him so much and wished he was there but also because I actually felt him there. It felt like we were writing together, except instead of looking to him for confidence I was trusting myself. I felt my fear dim, and clarity came through. From then on, I feel like I’ve gone through different levels of fear but always with the clarity that I am Reyna Tropical and in the process these insecurities will pass and guide me to the next version of myself.

What is the significance of releasing this on November 16th?
November 16th is the day Sumo was born and I decided that every year on his birthday, I’m going to release a new song. It might not be year round that he will be at the forefront of my conversations, my memories or my mind, but once a year, I’m giving myself the space and opportunity to indulge in my memories of us, and create something for people to continue to remember the love that started all of this.

What has it been like touring the last several months without the physical presence of Sumo? 
He’s physically not here but he is definitely present. I am eternally grateful to be surrounded by extremely talented and supportive friends and family who are either with me on stage or helping on the side of the stage. I travel with a crew now! When Sumo and I performed together it was always about inviting our ancestors to the stage, channeling their messages and honoring them. I feel like he really doesn’t miss an opportunity to come through now that he’s an ancestor. For a long time I didn’t know if I would be able to find someone who I trusted as much as him to ground me on stage and keep me safe, but now I see this more as an opportunity to collaborate with folks and build powerful energy together. In the last months I’ve been touring with my partner who is one of the best herbalists and herbal educators on the east coast, founder of Herban Cura. At every single show we play we make time to give offerings to the land, and harvest plants from these lands to bring on stage. 

Do you have a vision of how you want to continue making music moving forward?
I don’t want to lose the relationship I have with music, and the spontaneity of what makes me have fun. The band has always just been that way, and no one’s gonna tell me to do things differently. Sumo and I were really, really strict about that. We’d be like…”I don’t fucking care what that person wants me to do.” Someone would be like, “hey, I want you to play this way” and we’d say, “We’re not going to do that and here’s what we’re going to do instead!” So I want to keep asking for what I want to do. I want to keep asking venues to take care of black and brown people and our black and brown audiences. I want to keep asking to make sure venues have queer people on staff and working our shows and also to make sure that queer people are going to be safe and cared for in those spaces.

Anything you’d like to say about any upcoming new music?
Next year Reyna Tropical will be releasing our first full length album and the first body of work since the Sol y Lluvia EP in 2019. Personally, I think it’s the best music I’ve ever made and I literally cannot wait for the world to hear it!