Porte Blindado Sing Vivid Corridos About Oakland’s Streets

Porte Blindado are locked in. At least three times a week, the four young musicians haul amps, guitars and an upright bass into a small warehouse tucked between window-tinting shops and mechanics’ garages in Deep East Oakland. This is where vocalist Andres “AR” Rosillo, guitarists Pedro “Peaz” Zamora and Jemmiel Moore and upright bassist Luis Hernandez come together to perfect their distinctly Bay Area take on Mexican regional music.

“I feel like growing up and being born in the Bay area, we talk a certain way, dress a certain way, so the norm is very different when you go play in a grupo and they see you show up in some T-shirts and sneakers, compared to the traditional sombrero and botas,” says Peaz, who’s sporting Jordans and an A’s hat with a braided rat tail sticking out. “Our version catches a lot of people off guard, like, ‘Who are these kids?’”

“But you are who you are at the end of the day,” he adds with a shrug. “Sometimes you gotta let the norm change with you.”

While high-drama corridos, brass-heavy banda and sierreño ballads have been in heavy rotation in Mexican American households for generations, a new crop of superstars — including Peso Pluma, Natanael Cano, Junior H and DannyLux — have reimagined these styles for a younger generation and attracted a global following. Porte Blindado, whose members range from 19 to 23 years old, are following in the footsteps of California bands like Eslabon Armado and Fuerza Regida, who’ve helped bring regional Mexican music into the U.S. mainstream.

Before Fuerza Regida got big enough to headline arenas all over the U.S. and Mexico, they were a cover band gigging at private parties in their hometown of San Bernardino. That’s the stage where Porte Blindado currently find themselves: Putting out original material and playing their own shows while sustaining the band financially through quinceñeras, weddings and other privadas.

Corridos are all about telling a good story, and although Porte Blindado have yet to release a debut album, they’ve built up momentum this year through a consistent stream of singles that have a hard edge, with Spanish-language lyrics whose themes often overlap with Bay Area rap. The group’s songwriting is exhilarating on “Es Talento,” where AR narrates a hair-raising tale of a cannabis warehouse robbery while Moore and Zamora shred on dueling guitars and Hernandez slaps his bass like his life depends on it. Their irreverent and supremely catchy track “Mi Madre Dice” revels in the dark side of street life. Meanwhile, “Gorrita de Fox” is an anthem about showing out in style.

“I feel like a lot of people can relate,” says AR. “We definitely write with that Bay Area vibe.”

The band members have a playful, brotherly camaraderie as they joke around and share curly fries before a recent rehearsal, but when they take out their instruments, they’re intensely focused. Like a lot of people who grew up in the multicultural Bay Area, they share an eclectic music taste, name-checking Atlanta trap star Lil Baby and San Francisco guitar god Carlos Santana as influences that push them to keep evolving.

“We got closer because of the music,” says bassist Hernandez, the youngest member and unofficial comedian of the group.

Lead guitarist Moore, the only band member who isn’t Chicano, found his way to Mexican regional music from jazz and heavy metal. “One day in class, I had some friends come up to me like, ‘Hey, try this genre out.’ First I was like, ‘I don’t even know what they’re saying,’” he says.

Despite the language barrier, he fell in love with Mexican regional music and realized his perspective — and nimble solos honed by studying jazz scales — could actually become a strength. “Our style is different. That’s what makes us unique,” says Moore. “Especially for me, I like to try to implement different types of genres into my style.”

As the young regional Mexican music scene continues to grow in the Bay Area, Porte Blindado is collaborating with peers like Reyes Del Trono, who add a tuba bounce to their joint single “Soy y Sere.” (Reyes Del Trono recently did a live set at the Oakland Ballers’ first-ever Latine heritage night baseball game.) Another local band, Clave 77, recently joined Porte Blindado for the high-energy, guitar- and horn-forward duet “Pura Calidad.”

The members of Porte Blindado have an intuition for marketing, and a few of their TikToks — including one of AR getting kicked out of a mall while playing “Mi Madre Dice” on guitar — have gone viral, helping them expand their following outside the Bay. Their next gig is at the banda festival Maniaco Fest in Hollister, just south of Gilroy, on Aug. 30, and in September they plan on making a trip down south for a Los Angeles show.

East Oakland is where it all started, though, and at a recent free show in Fruitvale put on by Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice, Porte Blindado got to feel the love from their hometown crowd. “Afterwards it was hella cool, all the kids were taking pictures with us,” AR recalls with a smile. “‘Oh, peace sign!’ We had to throw hella peace signs.”

It’s moments like those that remind Porte Blindado why they spend countless hours a week practicing. Why they carve out time between their day jobs of working construction and painting houses to perfect a craft that’s rooted in tradition but has forward motion, transcending cultures and generations.

“We have so much that we want to get done as a group,” says Peaz. “I feel like we’re hungry for it.”

“We just getting started,” adds AR. “Buckle up, because this gon’ be a ride.”