Renee Goust  from Sonora to the Word to Establish Gender Equality Hymns

By Cesar A Reyes

Mexican-American singer-songwriter Renee Goust seeks to make historically underrepresented groups visible in Mexican music. Her songs “La cumbia feminazi” and “Querida muerte (No nos maten)” are well-established gender equality hymns in Latin America. Her music has been featured in Billboard, Rolling Stone, and El País, to name a few. Renee has performed at renowned venues like Lincoln Center and the Guggenheim Museum in New York and El Zócalo in Mexico City. She has collaborates with the United Nations, Amnesty International and LGBTQ+ marches in New York, Mexico City, and La Paz, Bolivia. Goust is an accomplished composer who has created original music for international films and theater productions. In 2021, Renee received the New York City’s Women’s Fund grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts, leading to her album Resister, which she created with a team of twenty-seven women and non-binary individuals. In 2022, Renee Goust was appointed Cultural Ambassador of the United States as part of the American Music Abroad program. In 2023, she represented her home state of Sonora in the internationally renowned Festival Internacional Cervantino in Guanajuato, Mexico.

Can you please describe your journey, how it started?

My journey as a musician started when I was 4 years old and my mom had me audition for a local children’s choir in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. The choir director told her I had no talent for singing and suggested piano lessons instead. My parents couldn’t afford to buy me a keyboard at the time, so they drew one on a piece of cardboard for me. Eventually, my parents were able to get me  a keyboard and even an upright piano when I was about 11. I had 3 different piano teachers from age 5 to 14. At age 14, I quit the piano in favor of the “cooler” guitar. I knew theory by then, so self-taught with a chord chart as I learned Shakira songs from her album “Pies descalzos”, but two years later I missed the piano and took singing, piano and guitar lessons with the same professor during my last two years of high school. That’s when I decided I wanted to make music full time. I chose it over political science, linguistics and philosophy, which were my other options. 

As far as my journey as a queer person is concerned, the first time I realized I was totally crushed out with a girl was when I was 14. She was the daughter of my cousins’ baseball coach. The first song I ever wrote on guitar was for her, thought I never showed it to her. I knew she wasn’t queer, she was always flirty with the boys. Then, when I was 16 I had my first girlfriend. I went to a Catholic high school at the time and we got caught by the nuns after escaping my junior prom together when I was a junior. The nuns called my parents asking to meet the following week and my mom asked what it was about, since I was a straight-A student and pretty much a star child, and I felt like it was best that she hear it from me and so I told her I had a girlfriend. At first she thought I was “confused”, she said it would be a “phase” but deep inside me I knew it wasn’t and luckily I never felt like there was anything wrong with me. With time, it got quite violent at home, but I kept dating girls and eventually women. I even got married at age 28 (and divorced 5 years later). I started writing explicitly queer lyrics when I was in my early 20’s. I felt like I wanted to do the opposite of what old school queer greats such as Juan Gabriel had done, where they would conceal the gender identities of the objects of their desire. I wanted to be seen and also to provide people like me a place to feel safe and portrayed. It’s very important for me to tell stories of love, joy and hope in my music, not just of pain and struggle. I feel like too often we are portrayed as people who mostly suffer and that hasn’t been the case for me at all, especially after my mid-20’s and now in my 30’s.

Mexican Regional music is changing for the better because of artists like you, growing up who were some of the artists who you looked up to?

I definitely looked up to Chavela and JuanGa when I became more aware. I’d say that was in my early 20’s. I do remember my first “queer anthem” being “All the Things She Said” by T.A.T.U. because I came out in 2003 and that song had been released in the fall of 2002. After I left Mexico and moved to New York in 2007, though, I became a lot more nostalgic for the sounds of my territorios and that’s when I started paying more attention to Regional Mexican music in general. I used to associate it with machismo and tradition that came from a place of closed-mindedness, but one day I realized that didn’t have to be the case.and so I chose to write songs such as “La Apuesta” and “El Corrido de Sylvia Rivera” and “La Muchacha Alegre”, etc.

What inspires you?

I’m inspired by so many things but something that inevitably moves me is injustice and impotence. I feel like my songwriting practice is very therapeutic and closely connected to the things that hurt me. One way I heal is to write about things that trouble me, sadden me, enrage me or that I simply can’t come to understand. That’s how “La cumbia feminazi” was born. I couldn’t understand why anybody would use that word to compare feminists with Nazis. Other important sources of inspiration for me are joy, bliss and pride. I like to make myself seen in a shameless way, I like to flaunt who I am because I grew up in a culture that told me I was flawed of defective and I want to keep spreading the narrative that queer is beautiful and trans is beautiful, and the best way I can do that is through my music.

What can audiences look forward to during your participation at SD Pride?

I’m excited to be playing three instruments on stage for SD Pride (guitar, keyboard and accordion). I’ll be singing, too. I really enjoy giving everything I have to each audience I sing for. My lyrics are beyond personal and emotional, so I share a lot of myself every time I sing them and I hope that Latinx folks and especially Mexican queer folks will really connect with this reclaiming of sounds that were always ours and that were denied to us for being who we are. There will be corridos, rancheras and cumbia.

San Diego’s Pride theme this year is “Making History Now”, how would you like to be remembered in history?

I would like to be remembered as someone who was authentic and true to themselves, someone who stood up against injustice, someone who wasn’t afraid to raise their voice and make themselves visible and heard. I really hope that my music can live on and survive me and stay in the hearts of people who were touched by it. Mostly, I wanna be remembered as someone who was loving, and who embodied the essence of La Muchacha Alegre or La Muchacha Violenta, depending on what the circumstance called for.

If you could deliver a message to your audience, what would that message be?

 If I could deliver a message to my audience, I would say: You are valid. You are worthy of love. You are enough. Follow your heart’s dreams and start wherever you can. You don’t have to feel “perfect” in order to be worthy of celebration. You deserve to be happy and you will be. And very importantly: You are not alone. I’m here for you. Reach out on socials if you ever need a friend to talk to or vent with.

What are your interests aside from performing?

My favorite thing in the world is spending time with my abuelita Socorro. She’s the love of my life. She’s 93 years old and lives in Sonora, so I don’t get to see her that often, but whenever I’m in Nogales, I spend most of my time by her side. I also incredibly enjoy songwriting, even though that’s in my line of work. I’d say my other passion, besides music, is cooking. I don’t cook as often as I used to because my schedule doesn’t always allow for it, but I ran a Michelin-starred restaurant in NYC for about 8 years before doing music full-time, so you can imagine how much food and drink are still an important part of my life.

Please follow me on socials @reneegoust and listen to my new single NO SOY DE NADIE, co-produced with NYC-based bassist Khylie Rylo, which dropped yesterday. Here is the brand new music video (dropped yesterday) and the track on Spotify as well as on Apple Music.