Leo Soto: “Hopefully the pandemic will end and people will want to continue dancing with the orchestras”

Although they are almost 40 years old, Leo Soto still remembers his arrival at La Sonora by Tommy Rey.” The Sonora Palacios had dissolved on a Sunday night, on Tuesday Leo Nuñez called me to participate in the project, on Wednesday we practiced and on Friday we debuted,” he says briefly. That’s how it started, five members came out, including the singer, the Tommy, and the first repertoire that we began to play and that we still do not play are the songs that Tommy recorded with the Sonora Palacios, the biggest hits: ‘Caminante’, ‘El Galeón Español’… all those well-known songs were our first repertoire,” he says. And so, with the passage of time Tommy Rey’s Sonora began to dominate the parties with their own hits such as “Se murió Tite” or “Daniela”, and now, with the four decades of the group just around the corner, the band is preparing to celebrate it with “40 Years of Tradition and Style”, their new compilation album. This project brings together the most significant classics of the group, but recorded this year in times of pandemic, with a renewed aura and spirit to celebrate each song that has made crowds dance and enjoy. No, because we were already vaccinated and there was no problem. The truth is that the Southern Studios is a very big place, it is a studio that has all the comforts, we were not all glued, so there were no problems, we did not even catch a cold. In addition to the enough of us all already vaccinated, we all have the third dose and the flu dose as well. It is that we must protect ourselves, and the old people must take care of ourselves. If we take care of ourselves, we are firm.How do you see the landscape now with the opening of the presentations? Look, it’s very slow. It is just starting, just opening, hopefully this will continue like this. One of the things that I criticize the most is that the Vineyard Festival is not done. It’s not because international artists don’t come, you can’t do a good festival, it feels like here in Chile we don’t have good artists. That’s one of the things I criticize the most. You can do tremendous National Song Festival only with Chilean artists. But have they been able to show up? We’ve done things by streaming, but it’s not the same. Because people in good Chilean don’t fish that thing. Hopefully this pandemic will end for the good of the world, for our country that has gone to the miére with all this … A couple of weeks ago we were playing on the anniversary of the commune of Tocopilla. It is very beautiful to work with an audience. We were there last week and it was done to the shore on the beach. It was crowded, but crowded. You dropped a drumstick and people danced (laughs). They were eager to participate, to dance, to feel free. It was very nice, very nice experience that we lived. Hopefully this pandemic will end for the good of the world and that people will want to continue dancing with the orchestras.

Original source in Spanish