Don’t you love those unexpected brushes with old chums during South By South West? Sure, for us native Austinites they feel less like chance encounters and more like the inevitable kismet of living in a metropolitan area as small and dense as ours. But there’s still nothing quite like finding an old friend return to their old stomping grounds in top form.

So imagine how it felt upon learning that Fabi Reyna – who we remember from our high school and college days playing in Code Rainbow, The Silver Series, and Patches – was going to come down from Portland for KUTX’s latest Scholz Garten live concert broadcast. Yes, the matriarch of She Shreds herself graced us with Reyna Tropical‘s presence right in between SPRINTS and Hinds back in mid-March. Frankly, Fabi was in high spirits, even after the tragic passing of fellow Reyna Tropical co-founder “Sumohair” Diaz in Fall 2022. But this contrast matches that of Malegría – the near-untranslatable emotion of “bad happiness” and twenty-track debut full-length that landed online last Friday, which has already raked in some impressive streaming numbers.

Well, in getting to Scholz by 10AM that SX Wednesday, la raza y la gente scored a sneak peek at Malegría, and not just the LP’s lead singles. No, they got a better-than-coffee, tastier-than-tequlia concierto brimming with Chicana charm, thanks to exhilarating, en-español renditions like that of “Sauvecito”. Heck, we don’t wanna jinx anything, but we do suspect this might go down as one of those “you had to be there before they blew up” pieces of pre-superstardom magic as Fabi makes her way across the nation with Portugal. The Man and Malegría makes its way across the globe.

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