Mexican composer turns fire and ritual into a musical journey of renewal

MEXICO CITY (AP) – Mexican composer María Leonora prepares for each concert as if she’s gearing up for battle.

Her makeup has a tribal edge. Her clothes are arranged in layers she sheds as the show unfolds. An amulet over her belly button serves as protection.

“I look into the mirror and I sort of go to war,” she said prior to a recent presentation in Mexico City. “I brace myself to walk through the fire and whatever happens happens.”

Her 2025 performances were conceived as chapters connected by a common thread. She called the series “Through All the Fire,” believing that both music and flames carry a powerful renewal quality.

“A fire can burn and destroy,” she said. “But if you make it through, you can be reborn.”

That same idea of heat and renewal is present in the ambience of her shows. Her concerts draw inspiration from a pre-Hispanic steam bath known as a “temazcal,” which played a significant role in Mesoamerican social and religious life.

“You may suffer as you enter a temazcal, but you put up with it,” she said. “You sweat and your ego cracks. Even if you don’t want to, heat breaks you.”

Temazcales had a ritual function and a cosmological significance for Mesoamerican cultures, wrote archaeologist Agustín Ortiz in a publication from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History.

Built in stone or adobe structures, each bath could hold dozens of people and produced steam by heating stones before dousing them with water.

“The temazcal was seen as the Earth’s interior and as a passageway between the world of the living and the underworld,” Ortiz wrote. “It was conceived as an entrance to the ‘beyond.'”

Most of them were located near ceremonial ballcourts, underscoring their connection to the game’s ritual dimension.

Temazcales remain in use today, but their earliest forms have been found in Maya cities such as Chichén Itzá and Palenque, and in sites like Tlatelolco and Teotihuacán in central Mexico.

María Leonora encountered music’s healing power at age 16.

She embraced punk rock as an adolescent going through a rough patch. And after learning how to play the drums, she first set foot on a stage.

“I was able to transform so many things just by playing and standing in front of an audience,” she said. “I can honestly say it saved my life.”

From then on, she spent years playing with other musicians and engaging in different genres.

In “Through All the Fire,” she interprets a wide variety of songs in an attempt to make her audiences move from darkness into a sense of renewal.

“Music is a powerful tool that can connect you to Earth, to life, to the universe and to other people,” she said. “It’s a means for you to dig up and find things about yourself.”

She describes her shows as “immersive concerts,” meaning that sound, lights and visuals play a role in shaping the attendees’ involvement.

“We want the audience to feel enveloped in the experience of each song,” said producer Diego Cristian Saldaña. “In the emotions and specific sensations the music triggers and that we’re intentionally seeking.”

That intention comes through in how audiences describe the experience.

In a video released by Mexico City’s Ministry of Culture in late November, a young man who had seen María Leonora’s performances on three occasions said each experience had felt deeply gratifying. Another woman mentioned she felt exhausted ahead of the show but left full of energy, wishing to get on with her life.

“We constantly encourage people to actively participate,” she said. “To dive into an internal journey.”

“Through All the Fire” starts with her voice inviting the audience into crossing the “salt circle,” which means to leave behind the outside world.

As the lights remain warm and subtle, her first song talks about love. Then the repertoire moves to a breakup. The pain brought by separation reflects on the stage.

As the show evolves, María Leonora explores deeper emotions, and she gradually removes her makeup and takes off layers of clothes. Then the climax comes.

“As my character is exhausted, to the ground, it starts to breathe again,” she said. “The moment comes to walk through the fire, as you would do in a temazcal.”

To liberate themselves with her, attendees are encouraged to howl, scream or engage in whatever ritual they feel they need. Once free from what weighs on them, they sing.

“Our last song is like a first ray of light,” she said. “You can look back into your life and move forward toward luminosity.”