South Bend band rises on national TV talent show, like 'America's Got Talent' in Spanish

SOUTH BEND — When his big break came — a call from a TV studio in Burbank, California — Isac Ruelas said, “I hung up because I thought it was a scam.”

How could it be that the Mexican music trio he’d started on South Bend’s west side, with guys ages 15 and 18, could actually make it onto EstrellaTV, a Spanish-language network that reaches 60 million households in the U.S.?

Was their guitar playing, which they started to learn just two years ago, really good enough for the network’s version of “America’s Got Talent”?

The phone rang again.

Brothers Isac and Moises Ruelas and their uncle, Gabriel Saenz, were about to emerge from their homes and their usual gigs in the city’s “Little Mexico” neighborhood and make their first splash on “Tengo Talento Mucho Talento” — which translates as “I’ve Got Talent, Lots of Talent” — now in its 13th year with five influential celebrities as their judges.

They would win their first on-air round of the competition that aired April 4. And from 8-10 p.m. April 27, viewers will see if they advance out of the quarterfinals.

In a way, they mirror last year’s rise of three South Bend-based siblings whose band, Girl Named Tom, progressed and won the NBC competition “The Voice.” Only in Spanish.

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“We liked them for many reasons,” the show’s general producer, Tomas Rubio, said on the phone from the Burbank studio.

The show’s staff liked the band’s storyline of how they’d turned away from their initial dreams of rock and embraced Mexican music. They liked that they are all family — and young.

But, Rubio added in a sincere voice — echoed by anyone who’s seen them — “The most important part is that they had talent.”

Fast learners

The band calls themselves Los de San Rafael as a tribute to their grandpa, who’d turned them onto Mexican regional music, since he’d grown up in the town of San Rafael in the Mexican state of Jalisco.

Isac had been rapping since he was 8, eventually getting his own studio equipment and writing his own rap tunes.

But, for Christmas 2019, Isac’s and Moises’ mom bought them each a classical guitar. Isac began learning to play early in 2020, starting with songs by The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd. A couple of months later, his younger brother, Moises, now 15, started to learn guitar, too, following Isac’s lead into rock.

Then their grandpa introduced them to the heart-felt crooning and guitar picking of Ariel Camacho, who died at age 22 in a car crash in 2015, and his famous three-member band.

It inspired Isac.

“I like putting my emotions into it,” Isac said.

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They were delving into a form of Mexican regional music, known as Sierreña, that matches guitars with story-telling songs. Sierreña music has exploded in popularity among teenagers in recent years, thanks to artists like Camacho.

They were learning fast.

Isac heard his Spanish class teacher at Washington High School, Gabriel Hernandez, had a background in music and asked for advice. They soon paired up for informal visits where Hernandez helped Isac to improve his guitar, composition and vocal skills. And Hernandez quickly noticed something about Isac.

“I thought he was going to be an internationally famous artist,” Hernandez said, speaking from experience.

He’d seen a similar quality in rising Mexican music stars. From 2005 to 2010 back home in Mexico, he was teaching classes at a music school where, he said, “My job was to find new talent.”

Hernandez, a piano player and composer himself, was teaching a class in piano for guitar players to the likes of Grammy-winning Natalia Lafourcade, who would go on to sing one of the versions of the song "Recuérdame/Remember Me" in Disney-Pixar's animated film “Coco.”

In Isac, he said: “I don’t know what it is, but he has something special. The main thing is: He has a dream. He has a lot of talent. He really wants to do it. He looks for places to play.”

Isac went on to write six of his own songs, one of which, he said, has gained some 9,000 views. The Ruelas brothers recruited their uncle, Gabriel Saenz, now 18, to learn the bass and help form the band.

And as pandemic restrictions eased, they quickly picked up gigs. Isac, who lives at home with his brother, said the band has been making enough money to become his full-time work. They recently have logged 10 to 15 hours a week in shows at local restaurants and events. They’re joining other local performers in an April 30 parade in Washington, D.C., and hope to also join South Bend’s Memorial Day parade.

“We’re already pretty big here,” Saenz proudly said, eager to see the band progress outside of South Bend.

“They’re young, and they’re putting a lot of effort into getting themselves out there,” their promoter, Jose Herrera of South Bend, said. “They’re talking about it all the time.”

“We were progressing really fast on guitar,” Moises said. “We wanted to let people know that we’re playing really good.”

Moises, who’s a freshman at Marian High School in Mishawaka, once dreamed of becoming a professional soccer player.

“Then I started playing guitar, and I got more into it,” he said. “I found it’s something that can get me farther in life.”

On the show

Isac heard that “Tengo Talento Mucho Talento” was holding online auditions. So he pulled together a video of why the band wanted to compete, plus snippets of them performing.

“I didn’t expect to get a call,” he said.

That first call, the one he’d first hung up on, led to a virtual interview on Zoom, after which Isac still doubted.

“Why aren’t they texting us faster?” he wondered.

A month later, the next call informed him that the band was flying to California — all expenses paid — for their first appearance on the show.

“Oh man, this is really confirmed,” he thought.

The band was among 250 groups who survived out of 800 virtual auditions, sending them to their first show, Rubio said. Then 48 groups were selected for the quarterfinals — a return trip to California two weeks ago for the show that will air on April 27.

Out of them, 16 groups will head to the semifinals.

“If they go to the finals,” Rubio said, “they can go big because they have the talent.”

He said many finalists on the show have been hired by bands. One former contestant, Luis Coronel, became the show’s current host.

For their first appearance on the show, the band walked on stage with relaxed smiles, sunglasses and gold-and-black dress shirts – a nod to The Beatles and San Rafael’s one-time rock dreams. When one judge asked about it, Moises picked a few lines of The Beatles’ “Blackbird.”

They launched into a familiar love song, “El Indio Enamorado (The Indian in Love),” as one cheeky judge, Don Cheto, who’s the namesake for an entire radio network, danced about as he pretended to gather tips from the other judges, who sang along.

When it was over, the picky judge, Pepe Garza — an influential radio programmer in Mexico who, on this show, is akin to Simon Cowell on “America’s Got Talent” — advised them to work on Moises’ harmonizing voice. The group quickly and happily thanked the judges for the advice.

“It was a lot of fun," Rubio, the producer, said. "The judges liked them a lot,”

The Second Tengo Mucho Talento test

At the second show, airing this week, the band sang a tune about remembering someone, “Con la Suela Roja [With the Red Sole (of a Shoe)].”

Isac said their performance started with a glitch, a touch of the nerves and an odd look from a judge.

“It was a humbling experience for us,” he recalled.

Under contract, he cannot reveal whether or not the band is advancing to the next level of the competition.

Here in South Bend, the band takes feedback from the kid who saw Isac at a wedding and asked for an autograph. And from the strangers in restaurants and the bowling alley who’ve asked, “Are you the guys in the show?”

On TV

The Spanish-language network EstrellaTV airs the show “Tengo Talento Mucho Talento” from 8-10 p.m. April 27. EstrellaTV (estrellatv.com) can be watched via several streaming services, including Roku, DirecTV, Hulu, Pluto TV, AppleTV and Amazon.

Email South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits at jdits@sbtinfo.com. Follow him on Facebook at SBTOutdoorAdventures.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: 'Tengo Mucho Talento' tests South Bend Mexican band for national stars