Courtesy of The Tiarras
The Tiarras have been playing together since they were just little girls, but they’ve been sisters forever. The band is arguably best known for writing and performing catchy tunes that dive into themes of Latina empowerment, self-love and they’re not afraid to get political.
On this episode of Latino USA, the hermanas tell us more about the role sisterhood plays in their creative process and why they hope their art and journey inspire future generations of Latinos and Latinas.
This power sister-trio consists of 22-year-old drummer Sophia Baltierra, 24-year-old bassist Tiffany Baltierra and 20-year-old lead singer Tori Baltierra. Growing up, Tori said her sisters had begun taking music lessons because they naturally showed interest in banging on pots and percussion, but then Tori’s life forever changed one day when she was in third grade.
“I was in music class and saw my teacher playing guitar and I was really interested,” she said. “I was like, ‘What is this world like?’ The guitar is filling up the room and making everyone sing and dance and so right after that I got lessons and we realized we were in the same household playing instruments that pretty much go with a band.”
The Tiarras have traveled around Texas, playing cover songs but also original songs like “Soy Chingona,” “Let Love Free” and “They Don’t See Us.”
Earlier this year, they decided to change their band name from The Tiarra Girls to The Tiarras.
“We want to honor the fact that we are growing up, we’re women now,” Tori said. “We were finding our path in life and our identities and music in our community and we wanted to bring people along with us and our supporters that were there with us from day one and we wanted to bring them on this new era that we’re embarking.”
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Latino USA with Maria Hinojosa, produced by Futuro Media, is the longest-running Latino-focused program on U.S. public media.
