· Tucson, Arizona
Yeah No
I can’t say for certain this has happened to you (but I bet it has): you’re in a car or on a plane, a song comes on, and you tear up. It might not even be a sad song, a somebody-done-somebody-wrong-song. Maybe it’s an upbeat summer tune, dance track, or death metal. It doesn’t matter and it doesn’t make sense.
Unless you’re Jeezael Torres. At 18, Torres knows that music’s power transcends genres, listening, or performing.
I met Jeezael Torres in fall 2025 while I was working on an article about a mariachi performance. At the time, he was a high school student performing with Tucson High Magnet School’s Mariachi Rayos del Sol and gigging with Mariachi Herencia de Corazon. His violin talent caught the attention of another local mariachi group, who invited him to a rehearsal.
When Torres and I spoke a few days later and throughout the past year, it was clear that what Torres enjoys most about music is helping people. He gave an example from playing funerals with Mariachi Herencia de Corazon.
“It’s a way to get them to express emotion,” he said. “If you play a very sad song, it’ll help them with that emotion. But then you play happy songs, and it’ll change in an instant.”
This playlist reflects Torres’s desire to help people, including himself, process feelings through music. He said, “It’s a playlist I’ve listened to since middle school, before I was in mariachi. It helps me capture emotion and has been with me through many hard times, making it easier to revisit those feelings.”
“I think there is lots I can say about the music and each individual artist or song and too much to say in a day but what I would say is give it a listen and get vulnerable in the feelings, feel what the singer is feeling in those moments of sadness, joy, anger, solitude because you can find it all in there.”
Torres is now working on his real estate agent license and holding two jobs while saving for future plans. It leaves less time for music than he’d like, but it remains his passion, along with helping others experience it.