by Antonio Mejías-Rentas
Matt Detrich / la EstrellaPallbearers carry Mexican music star Sergio Gómez casket (photo by Matt Detrich/The Star)
MUSIC MURDERS: A U.S.-based singer who was a leading fi gure in the duranguense movement was one of three musicians killed violently last week in Mexico.
The body of Sergio Gómez, vocalist of the Grammy-nominated group K-Paz de la Sierra, was fl own last week to the Indianapolis suburb where he lived with his family, and where he was to be cremated. His tortured body was found in a rural road in Michoacán, a day after it was reported that he and two associates had been kidnapped following a concert in the state capital of Morelia Although a spokesperson for denied the band had any connections to feuding drug cartels in Michoacán, the killing is believed to be tied to the state’s narco violence. Reportedly, Gómez had been threatened not to perform in Morelia.
While some musicians are known to perform in alliance with drug lords, authorities believe that cartels “adopt” favorite groups with or without their consent – and use their music in torture and execution videos posted on the internet.
Unlike other murdered Mexican musicians, K-Paz de la Sierra did not perform narcocorridos, songs that glorify the drug trade and are sometimes written and performed for the cartels.
Gómez was a founding member of K-Paz de la Sierra, one of several Chicago-based Mexican groups formed by immigrants from Durango who launched a musical style known as duranguense. Its latest album, Conquistando corazones, was nominated for a Latin Grammy and Grammy this year.
The same weekend Gómez was slain, singer Zayda Peña was killed execution style in a hospital bed in the border town of Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas. She was in the hospital being treated for gun wounds received the day before in a motel, where two other people were killed. Authorities believed: the killer fl ed to the United States.
And the day Gómez’s body was fl own to the U.S., authorities in the southern state of Oaxaca discovered the tortured body of musician José Luis Aquino, a trumpet player with the group Los Conde.
Also on Dec. 7, Grammy nominations announced in Los Angeles included nods in the Banda category for both K-Paz de la Sierra and Valentín Elizalde – a singer killed last year in Tamaulipas, reportedly by narco gangs.
Dozens of Latino musicians are nominated in Latin music categories for the 50th annual Grammy Awards, to be handed out in February in Los Angeles. There are now eight categories in the Latin Field, including a new one for Urban Album.
(See a full list of nominees at www.grammy.com). Hispanic Link.
