At just 19 years old, Ángela Aguilar has established herself as one of the dominant new forces of Mexican ranchera music. The young star is bringing the musical style she grew up singing to a global audience and performing on some of the world's biggest stages.
Aguilar is part of one of Mexico's most prominent entertainment families, known as La Dinastía Aguilar, or The Aguilar Dynasty. Her grandfather was the late Antonio Aguilar (a GRAMMY-nominated mariachi singer and Mexican Cinema Golden Era actor), while her grandmother is singer and actor Flor Silvestre. Meanwhile, Aguilar's father is GRAMMY-winning mariachi singer/songwriter Pepe Aguilar — she was even born during one of his tour stops in Los Angeles in 2003.
Even with her famous relatives, Ángela has shaped her own career with her dynamic voice and contemporary takes on an age-old genre. In this episode of Run the World — and as part of GRAMMY.com's celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month — dive into the accomplishments Aguilar has achieved over the course of her virtuosic career to date.
Aguilar's career in ranchera music began at just 3 years old, when she stepped on stage in front of a crowd of 80,000 during her grandfather's final tour. By age 9, she had released her first album, a collaborative project with her brother Leonardo called Nueva Tradición. From there, she quickly began ramping up her musical career, and was frequently the youngest artist in the spaces in which she moved and performed.
In 2016, at age 13, she was the youngest person to participate in the BBC 100 Women festival in Mexico City. Backed by an all-male mariachi band, Aguilar spoke to the predominance of male performers in her format, and expressed the need to create more space for women in ranchera music.
"It's an industry of men and I hope that will change," she said at the event. "Nobody has discriminated against me as a woman, but I know that it does happen and I want it to change."
Since then, Aguilar has released two more full-length albums, continuing to grow her reach and critical acclaim. Her 2018 project, Primero Soy Mexicana, received a GRAMMY nomination for Best Regional Mexican Music Albumin 2019, when she was just 15 years old — putting her amongst some of the youngest nominees of all time.
Aguilar has also earned three Latin GRAMMY nominations, including a nod for Best Ranchero/Mariachi Album for her 2021 release, Mexicana Enamorada, this year.
No matter where she goes from here, Aguilar has stressed that she will never stray from her Mexican roots and the genre she loves most. "That's where I came from, it's in my veins, that's why I sing the songs that I do," she told GRAMMY.com in 2019. "I'm honoring my ancestors and the traditions that my grandfather and my grandmother have led me to follow. So before anything, before being American, I'm Mexican, and I'm proud of it."