Barely two years ago, the three young DJs of the group known as 3ball mty could barely get a gig in their home city of Monterrey. Gangland violence made it too dangerous to take their high-energy music around town. 

Today, the music the trio creates, called tribal music, is winning them fame far outside Mexico. They won the Latin Grammy for Best New Artist last fall, and tours have taken them to LA's Staples Center, the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas, Central Park in NYC and the Worldtronics festival in Berlin.

For the group's name, it took "3ball" which sounds like tribal in Spanish and "mty" which is the airport code for their home city. Tribal music is a mix of cumbia, Mexican pop, techno with a dose of norteno thrown in.

Even if you don't take to the music, the group's videos are fun because they often feature Mexican dancers wearing pointy boots, the footwear that originated in the northern town of El Huizache. Click here to see photos of the amazing Aladdin-like boots with pointy toes curling up nearly a yard. 

While not exactly a "boy band," the three members of 3ball mty are all either 19 or 20. Two of them met some six years ago outside an Oxxo convenience store, and became fast friends over their shared passion for Latin house music. The third member joined later. The song in the video above is probably their best known hit, Intentalo. 

For most Mexicans, Angelica Rivera needs no introduction. A soap opera star, she’s been in the public eye for two decades.

But her latest role is not a stellar one, certainly not like her part as “La Gaviota,” or The Seagull, in the soap opera titled Destilando Amor (Distilling Love) that was wildly successful and told of love in the town of Tequila, cradle of Mexico’s most fabled liquor.

Her new role is First Lady of Mexico and it requires her to stay in the background of President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Pena Nieto’s handlers certainly helped her reshape her image during the campaign. Gone were the sexy dresses. In their place were conservative clothes. The handlers also seem to be airbrushing her past.

Rivera, 42, had a 14-year previous relationship with a Televisa producer, Jose Alberto Castro, and the union produced three children. But no mention is made of that in the biography of the First Lady posted on the official presidential website, and only the briefest of mentions is made of her acting career.

“The First Lady has said on many occasions that her greatest challenge and biggest honor are serving both Mexico and the work of the man she most admires.”

Okay, already.

Pena Nieto’s official bio doesn’t point out that he was married for 13 years to Monica Pretelini, who died in 2007. The couple had three children (link in Spanish).

I guess you could call it a Modern Family, a widower and a divorcee remarry and pull their kids together. All six kids from the two marriages now live with the two in Los Pinos, the presidential residence.

The music scene in Tijuana is in creative upheaval. This is a 4-minute video about the blend of musical styles occurring in the border city, crossing boundaries between dubstep, punk rock, jazz, cumbia, no wave, norteño, banda, noise and techno. This video is done by Erin Siegal, whose videos I've posted before. Tijuana is indeed coming out of hiberation. Here's a story I did after a trip there early this year.

It’s a good time to talk about death. Day of the Dead is just around the corner.

Older Mexicans have seen an astounding transformation in when their day of reckoning comes.

In 1930, life expectancy for Mexicans was 34 years. By 2010, Mexican men were living an average 73.1 years while Mexican women were hitting 77.8 years.

These figures are courtesy of the National Statistics Institute, which provided some other tidbits in a report this week fitting to the theme of Day of the Dead.

In 2010, the most recent year for statistics, 592,000 Mexicans died. Men, it may come as no surprise, are dying in greater numbers than women. On average, the institute says, 132 men die for every 100 women.

But in the age range of 25-29, the gap spreads to 378 men die for every 100 women.

The most common cause of death in Mexico is diabetes, which takes 14 percent of those who die, it said.

Among kids aged 5 to 14, a high number get killed in auto accidents, either run over by vehicles or killed in crashes. It is the cause of 12.8 percent of their deaths. That category kills 16 percent of young people aged 15 to 29.

Of Mexicans who died a violent death, 70.8 percent were killed by a firearm, 10.1 percent were stabbed to death, 5.5 percent were asphyxiated and 13.6 percent were killed some other way.

I’ll let you get back to your pan de muerte and your chocolate skulls now.

We were out over the weekend and saw this motorcyclist at an intersection. You can't see it well but he was wearing a skeleton mask under his huge horned helmet. It's a fun time of the year, like Halloween on steroids, here in Mexico with the Day of the Dead coming up later in the week. If you're curious about Day of the Dead celebration, this site will tell you all you need to know. Believe it or not, this will be the first time I'm actually in Mexico for Day of the Dead celebrations. Every other year since 2010, I've been called away. 

This is a really lovely short video about two American opera professionals who are nurturing opera singers in San Miguel de Allende, the artsy colonial city in central Mexico that is home to many expats. This video is under five minutes long and very professionally and lovingly done. Click here for the Washington Post story that accompanies the video.

This is a charming trailer about Dreaming Nicaragua, a documentary about four impoverished Nicaragua kids and a traveling art teacher who coaxes them to express their innermost ideas. As you can see from the trailer, this is a light-hearted look at these kids and the film is winning awards. I'm personally delighted by this. The film is produced by the Padre Fabretto Foundation, a very worthwhile nonprofit group in Nicaragua run by my former housemate, Kevin Marinacci. Fabretto was originally an orphanage project set up by an Italian priest in Nicaragua but has expanded to become a training, health and community development project that very directly improves the lives of some 7,500 children and adolescents. Bravo, Kevin!

President Felipe Calderon is in Washington and New York this week and on his agenda is the bestowing of the Order of the Aztec Eagle, Mexico’s highest award to foreigners, on several individuals.

It’s still not clear to me if U2 singer Bono will be one of them.

The backstory dates to an incident at a U2 concert in 1997, and touches on the sons of a former president and the sense of entitlement that Mexican VIPs wield.

Last Friday, Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa said she’d spoken with Bono and told him of the decision to give him the award.

"He said that he feels very honoured and very pleased with this decision, and that Mexico is a country that he loves and admires," Espinosa said according to this article.

But when Los Pinos emailed information about Calderon’s trip over the weekend, Bono’s name wasn’t on the list of those who will receive the award. Instead, it is going to Klaus Schwab (founder of the World Economic Forum), Susan Segal (president of the Council of the Americas), and Magdy Martinez-Soliman, the former U.N. resident coordinator in Mexico.

Just a mix-up? Maybe not. El Universal’s political gossip column says this morning that Bono declined to attend the ceremony, which I believe is to be Tuesday.

Seems that hard feelings still linger from what happened at a U2 concert at the Foro Sol in Mexico City. It was then that the sons of then-President Ernesto Zedillo scored complementary tickets to the concert, then tried to leave through a restricted area.

After a dust-up, one of the bodyguards of the Zedillo sons hit U2 security guy Jerry Meltzer in the head with a gun barrel. A car in their convoy then ran over security chief Jerry Mele, nearly killing him. Mele never worked again.

Bono demanded an apology from Zedillo, who invited him to Los Pinos for what was reportedly a tense meeting. Zedillo blamed U2’s security crew for putting his sons’ lives in danger. Bono demanded a public apology, which was not forthcoming.

U2 stayed away from Mexico until 2006, and returned last year. It seems, though, that he has little taste for rubbing elbows with Mexican authorities.

This is a popular music video that has just come out and is taking Mexico by storm. It's by a band from Monterrey, Band of Bitches, and is superficially about beer and sultry weather. Very catchy. Lots of style and creativity and quite distinct from the sound of Nortec Collective, which I've posted on in the past here.

If you can make your way with Spanish, and you’re coming to Mexico City, there’s a handy new tool to find out what’s happening in the capital.

“Time Out,” the venerable weekly listings magazine that is already published in 60 major cities around the world, has finally come to Mexico City. 

The second edition was published this month. As someone who likes to see what restaurants are hot, which musicians are coming to town and what else is happening, this is just the thing. 

There’s the usual hipster, slightly snarky tone, with the big city feel. This month’s edition has articles on “Restaurants with terraces” and “The City seen from a Bicycle.” It also has a comparison of the Will Ferrell movie “Casa de mi Padre” and the Mel Gibson movie “Get the Gringo,” both of which are set in Mexico. Time Out says Ferrell wins, and his movie is "amusing, absurd and ridiculous." 

Unfortunately for our family, there is a column on our favorite restaurant, El Parnita, in the Roma district, that will only make the lines longer to get in. A few weeks ago, we had to wait an hour on a Sunday. But the food is lip-smacking worth it, especially the “Carmelita” breaded shrimp tacos.