Ivan Cornejo’s Mexican American Heartache

Cornejo recently turned twenty, and he is still managed by his sister, who is also his roommate: they live together in North Hollywood, and on the weekends they often visit their parents in Riverside, about an hour east of Los Angeles. Cornejo was born in California but spent his early years in Michoacán, Mexico, his parents’ home state—they wanted to make sure that he understood their native country. He returned to the United States at age six, which was around the time he persuaded his father, a truck driver, to buy him a guitar at a flea market. He picked up bits and pieces of music that he heard at home: the Beatles songs his mother loved, the Mexican ballads his father preferred, and a wistful instrumental composition by the Argentinean guitarist Gustavo Santaolalla, which teen-agers everywhere know as the musical theme of the video game The Last of Us.