I sat for hours in front of the stereo and listened to my cassette. That’s really all we wanted.ĭid music play a big role in your childhood?Įduin: One Christmas, I remember I asked for a stereo with a Los Tigres del Norte cassette. That was our biggest dream back then because it was considered the biggest venue. What was your vision for Grupo Firme when you founded it?Įduin: We saw many of our friends doing big things locally, like selling out Las Pulgas, a nightclub that was open 24/7 in Tijuana. He’s hungry to become one of the strongest executives, and we’re hungry to become one of the biggest bands. If he hadn’t pushed us to perform at Staples Center, we wouldn’t have done it. We’ve been very careful with those types of collaborations, and I trust in Isael that we’re doing the right thing. That’s why sometimes I go onstage wearing an urbano outfit with sneakers, and other times, I’m wearing boots and a tejana so I can make everyone happy and they don’t get caught off guard when we sing with an urban artist. We also recorded songs with Reik and Río Roma, but I’m always scared to go into another genre. Your sound fuses traditional styles such as banda and norteño with contemporary rhythms, including an upcoming collaboration with Maluma, right?Įduin Caz: Yes, we are collaborating outside of that style. crossover success and how embracing social media during quarantine helped it reach new heights. To mark the group’s 10th year together, Eduin and Jhonny reflect on Grupo Firme’s U.S. “And it’s something I’ve never seen happen before with a regional Mexican band.” “I’ve been doing this for 15 years,” says Larios. “All they needed to do to sell a show was to upload one or two posts on their social media, and that was it,” says TuStreams booking agent Tony Larios, who worked with Isael and Nederlander Concerts Latin talent buyer Eddie Orjuela on securing the dates. In lieu of a standard advertising strategy, the group leveraged its social media platforms to entice fans. The shows were Staples Center’s first live events in over a year, and the act surpassed every expectation: It sold an average of 9,000 tickets in the first half hour to date, it has grossed $15.9 million and sold 177,000 tickets in 2021, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. Prior to that, Grupo Firme had performed in the Los Angeles area just once before - in 2019 for 9,000 fans in Pico Rivera, a city approximately 11 miles southeast of downtown L.A. The band initially booked just one night at the 7,100-capacity Microsoft Theater for July 2020 before rescheduling due to demand.

The septet also earned a nomination for best banda album at the Latin Grammy Awards. At the 2021 Premios de la Radio Awards on Nov. 10, the band earned top honors with five wins: artist, norteño group, banda song (“Ya Supérame”) and collaboration of the year (“Yo Ya No Vuelvo Contigo” with Lenin Ramírez), as well as the Latin pride award. Grupo Firme has now logged 11 entries on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart and recently became the third-ever act to score an entry on the Billboard Hot 100 with a regional Mexican song, “Ya Supérame,” in October. That album, Nos Divertimos Logrando Lo Imposible (“We Enjoy Doing the Impossible”) - Grupo Firme’s latest - arrived in December, helping the band cross the 1 billion career streams threshold in the United States, according to MRC Data.

“We couldn’t let what we had worked so hard to build just fall apart.” To avoid getting upended by the ensuing lockdowns, the seven-piece act traveled to Caz’s home in Mazatlán, Mexico rented a studio that was accessible only to band members and recorded a breakout album to “keep the momentum going,” he says. As the pandemic reached North America in early 2020, the regional Mexican band Grupo Firme faced a watershed moment: “Innovate or die,” says 27-year-old frontman Eduin Caz.

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