INTERVIEW: 123 Andrés are ready to welcome many more amigos and friends
Photo: 123 Andrés features the wife-husband team of Christina Sanabria and Andrés Salguero. Photo courtesy of David Rugeles / Provided by official site with permission.
123 Andrés, the family-oriented musical duo featuring Christina Sanabria and Andrés Salguero, have built a career based on bridging cultural divides and promoting community-based concepts of acceptance, friendship and unity. For the past decade, their positive songs have won over the hearts of children and parents alike, and in 2020, their creativity shows no signs of stopping.
This year, Sanabria and Salguero have kept busy, even with the COVID-19 pandemic curtailing their live performances. They regularly perform live shows on YouTUbe and also released an album earlier in 2020. This month they have released a book and another album, both built around the theme of friendship. Hello, Friend / Hola, Amigo is out now from Scholastic, and Hola, Amigo: Songs of Friendship is also available.
“This will be our second album this year and then our first book,” Salguero said in a recent phone interview. “With COVID, all of the touring was canceled, but we have been working on this collaboration and this project. And it just made perfect sense to wrap it together with the book because all of the messages are aligned.”
123 Andrés have been nominated for multiple Latin Grammy awards, and they actually brought home the honor once as well. The industry has embraced them as much as families have across North America, Central America and South America.
“Hola, Amigo the book started out as a song that was originally written 10 years ago,” Sanabria said. “It was the very first song that Andrés wrote for 123 Andrés, and it was the first track on our first album. We’ve performed it at concerts many, many times, and we were fortunate enough to be able to collaborate with Scholastic. And when they heard our songs and thought about which ones they wanted to adapt into books, this one was one that they really latched on to. So it’s our first book.”
Sanabria said the message of friendship is always important, but in particular during these troubled times in the world. So many news headlines are implicitly about the values of being a good neighbor, of protecting one another and the community, of standing up for a fellow friend.
“So it’s a perfect time to talk about friendship and what that really means and to be a good member of our community,” she said.
Sadly, even though “Hola, Amigo” the song was penned 10 years ago, the lessons are still needed in 2020. In fact, Salguero finds that many things haven’t changed about the world, and perhaps they have gotten worse. This has only inspired 123 Andrés to keep playing the song, to adapt it into the new book and to continue spreading their unique brand of love and unity.
“So it was a message that we continued sharing,” Salguero said. “Every single show we would share this song because it really prepared the audience as a community to hear what we needed to say. It doesn’t matter where you come from, if you speak English or Español, we’re here together. We’re going to be a community. If you have a good heart and a smile on your face, we’re going to learn each other’s names. We’re all the same, and we’re going to be together. That message, we wanted to amplify.”
The inspiration for the song came from a negative experience in Salguero’s life. A decade ago he was going to use an ATM, and he saw that someone had scratched off the Spanish instructions. The musician found this to be a profound and meaningful chapter in his journey of living in the United States.
“They took the trouble of scratching the Spanish printed language, so I thought that was so meaningful,” he said. “I felt personally connected to this action, and I wanted to make a change. And I wrote the song, and we continue bringing this message. … I felt it was attacking me in a way. They were trying to erase my language and erase me from my community, so that’s why I wrote that song and wrote many songs that were centered around the immigrant experience. The beauty is that now a decade later, that action and many [other] interactions propelled me and inspired me to write songs and write this book.”
It is the ultimate reversal of fortune. A negative experience at an ATM machine has turned into many creative projects that have actually brought the beauties of the Spanish language to hundreds of families around the country.
“Little by little we continued planting seeds,” Salguero said. “These children are going to grow up with a mentality that they will never scratch off a language from a public space. But they will be curious, and they will be open and understanding. Hopefully we’re making an impact.”
Sanabria is equally impressed with how far 123 Andrés has come over this past decade. Her and her husband have enjoyed three Latin Grammy nominations and one win. They’ve also performed for audiences in Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Mexico and the United States.
“We have been part of family’s lives in incredibly special ways,” she said. “Recently we got a note from a parent who told us that our songs helped their child potty train. We know that our music helped children through tantrums, and that at night when they’re going to sleep, they listen to our lullaby album. We hear these messages from families, and the most important kind of message we hear is, ‘Your music and your videos and your concerts helped keep my children excited about speaking Spanish.’ And as someone who grew up here in the U.S. with immigrant parents who always insisted that I continue speaking Spanish, I know how important that is, both for the parents and the family and the grandparents who may not speak English and for the child themselves. I know that looking back as a child, I remember sometimes saying, ‘Oh, this is annoying,’ but I know how meaningful and valuable it is for me today on a personal level and also in terms of the opportunities and doors it unlocked. So, for us to be a part of a family’s day-to-day lives in this powerful way is incredibly special.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
123 Andrés’ new album is Hola, Amigo: Songs of Friendship and their new book is Hello, Friend / Hola, Amigo. Click here for more information.
