IF YOU’VE CAUGHT Sangre Joven rocking a hometown show at Plaza Park in the center of Las Vegas, you probably understand why the longtime band titled their latest release El Orgullo de Las Vegas (The Pride of Las Vegas). “When you play live, you want people dancing,” is how frontman Daniel Lee Gallegos explains the magic. Formed in 1989 by Gallegos and his late brother, Lorenzo Miguel, when the two were teens, Sangre Joven has expanded and contracted its lineup while releasing 15 studio albums and playing around 150 concerts a year. Besides Gallegos, who writes songs and plays lead guitar and piano, members are Manuel Lucero (drums), Gerald Roybal (bass), Ray Lucero (saxophone), Richard Maestas (bass), and 19-year-old singer/guitarist LaTrisha Padilla. Mostly sung in Spanish, Sangre Joven songs are often chart-toppers on KANW’s Friday Top 15 at 5 countdown of the most requested songs.
During the pandemic, I played live on Facebook every Friday for a whole year. By the end of the last show, the 60th, I had 89,000 people watching me play live. It was just insane.
I was singing Spanish music, complete songs, by the time I was three or four years old.
Back in the ’70s and ’80s, we didn’t have computers and stuff like that, so our form of family entertainment was getting together in the living room and pulling out the guitars and singing.
My idol was Al Hurricane. I mimicked everything he did.
I was just hooked on his guitar playing. I was there on a cassette player, rewinding, trying to figure out what key he was in and how he got those harmonies.
Northern New Mexico music is different from Tejano music. It’s kind of in the same genre, but it just has its own style. We play a little bit faster—like a ranchera or a corrido, it’s not laid-back.
We throw in the horn section, trumpets and a saxophone. It gives that northern New Mexico vibe.
Keep up at nmmag.us/losbrozz.
¡MÁS MÚSICA!
If you’re into Sangre Joven, check out Daniel Lee Gallegos’s New Mexico Music Award–winning ranchera, “El Cool Dude.”
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