Maná bringing its 'Rayando el Sol' tour to San Diego on Sunday

The world’s most popular Mexican pop-rock band, which has a dozen Grammy wins to its credit, is now embarked on its first tour in three years

San Diego Union-Tribune

Sept. 28, 2019 6 AM PT

The title of Maná’s ongoing “Rayando el Sol” (“Reaching for the Sun”) tour is drawn from the Mexican pop-rock band’s 1989 breakthrough song, but the four-man group isn’t resting on its laurels.

Earlier this month, the Guadalajara-bred band set a record with seven consecutive Los Angeles concerts at The Forum, which each drew more than 15,000 fans.

In 2018, Maná — which features lead singer Fher Olvera, guitarist Sergio Vallín, bassist Juan Calleros and drummer Alex González — became the first band to receive the Latin Recording Academy’s Person of the Year award, an honor previously accorded such superstars as Plácido Domingo, Shakira and former Tijuana guitarist Carlos Santana.

It remains to be seen if Maná’s Sunday concert here will include a cameo by armless San Diego guitar sensation Mark “Big Toe” Goffeney, whose 2016 guest spot with the band here at Viejas Arena went viral.

Maná: 8 p.m. Sunday. North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre, 2050 Entertainment Circle, Chula Vista. $39.50-$240, plus service charges. livenation.com

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George Varga

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first prize-winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 San Diego Press Club awards and a double first prize-winner at the 2022 San Diego Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”