Argentine singer María Becerra recently took the stage with Peruvian group Corazón Serrano, delivering a performance that’s quickly become a cultural moment. The collaboration, which took place at Corazón Serrano’s 33rd-anniversary concert, has sparked excitement among fans of both artists and highlighted Becerra’s versatility as she tackled the unique rhythms of Peruvian cumbia.
Becerra spoke with “Somos” about the experience, describing how Corazón Serrano reached out about four or five months ago with a proposal for a collaboration. “They sent us references of them and their songs,” she explained. “My manager asked me about it, we started listening to their songs and we went crazy. We loved what they did, they seemed incredible, we couldn’t believe we hadn’t known them before and, obviously, I said yes. And honestly, it’s been a pleasure from the second zero. I’m still talking to the girls I sang with, we all followed each other, we’re highly close.”
The challenge of performing Peruvian cumbia proved to be a unique one. “It was a whole experience and a challenge,” Becerra admitted. “When I first listened to the ‘Poco yo’ mix, I couldn’t quite understand the timing. The timings are very different. When the mix starts, the first song is ‘Poco yo’ and it was very difficult to catch the moment when the phrases fell because each verse falls in a different time than the other. Usually, you’re singing and you think, ‘Okay, this one fell here; the next one will fall in the same place.’ But no, they’re all different. So, it cost me a lot. When I was there in the stadium rehearsing, I was telling the girls, ‘But I don’t understand why here, I signify, in my head it should fall in a certain way like we sing it there and here it falls differently.’ Well, it was difficult to learn the timings, but we made it.”
Becerra’s recent performance comes as she reflects on a period of both immense success and personal growth. Her latest album, “Quimera,” is a deeply emotional work born from a place of vulnerability, following a year that included four sold-out stadium shows at River Plate in late 2025. “It was a year that will be forgotten, but similarly one to remember,” she said. “It had its two parts, things I wish to forget and things I would never want to forget. There was a lot of growth and a lot of healing in between. Once again, I felt like I proved to myself that I can always do a little more than I think, and ‘Quimera’ was something that helped me completely heal from everything that had happened to me; I was able to process and tell things in the way that comes naturally to me. In the studio I cried a lot, Xross knows, I’ve cried a lot and ending the year with something like the River Plate stadiums with everything that entails. The production, the 360, it was crazy, really a year that taught me a lot.”
The album features a series of alter egos, including Shanina, which Becerra created during a difficult period. “I was in a stage of sadness and grief and I had, I wouldn’t call it an artistic or creative block because the creativity was there, the songs were coming out, only they were songs that I would never release, because they were very sad, very dark, talking about what was happening to me and what I felt from the depths of my soul. It’s not that I didn’t like the songs; I liked them, but I would never want anyone to hear them. And well, I was like that for two months, unable to gain out of that place of creation, and that’s when Shanina was born, the first alter ego; it was precisely for that, to imagine that I was another person.”
“Mi Amor,” a collaboration with J Reis, closes the album and feels like a sealing of that painful chapter. “’Mi Amor’ is crazy, a very special song because I make it with Juli; writing it was crazy, honestly. There was a lot of emotion, containment and something that was also unlocked. Because whereas we talked a lot from the second one everything happened, it was always a situation in which I was crying and he was comforting me, and in the studio it was the first time I wasn’t like that. We have already gone through what happened, but we will always be there for each other. Music is something magical to me, because it always helps me a lot to stabilize.”
Beyond music, Becerra is expanding her artistic horizons, exploring painting and making her acting debut in a Netflix series. “I experience very proud because I am having the courage to take on these challenges that are not minor. A series on Netflix with Sebastián Ortega and a spin-off of ‘El Marginal,’ a whole challenge, and I am very happy and proud that I accepted it and happy also with how the people around me helped me prepare.”
El Alfa le dio “la bendición” para cantar Dembow.
Looking ahead, Becerra hopes to replicate her stadium 360 experience throughout the region, closing a chapter of pain and opening one of fulfillment. She leaves Lima with the promise of a historic collaboration with Corazón Serrano and the certainty that, no matter how dark the process, art will always find a way to transform it into light.
