Vicente Fernández, who has died aged 81, was a Mexican megastar of traditional mariachi music and its more commercial 20th century offshoot ranchera, and was known to his fans simply as “El Rey”.
Mariachi has its roots in 19th century Jalisco, on Mexico’s west coast, where the collision of Spanish, African and indigenous cultures spawned a distinctive form of dance music and song. During the period of early post-revolutionary nation building in the 20th century, mariachi performers, particularly solo ranchera singers, left their folksy provincial image behind on their way to becoming spangle-suited, moustachioed popular icons of Mexicanidad – Mexicanness.
Sporting a narrow moustache, thick sideburns and bushy eyebrows which he dyed black in later years, Fernández, also known by his nickname “Chente” (short for Vicente), would stride on to the stage like a toreador in huge embroidered sombreros, cowboy boots and over-the top elaborately stitched and spangled skintight “charro” suits (custom-made by his personal tailor from the hide of unborn calves), and belt out highly emotional, often tormented, ballads of love and loss and patriotism in a full-blooded baritone to sell-out audiences all over the Hispanic world.
His voice, wrote one commentator, “is instantly recognisable, thick and rich and smooth, embellished with tremors and tears, guffaws and whimpers, bending and cracking, from aching falsettos to swaggering roars. He has never taken a singing lesson and has no patience for warm-up routines… His only trick, he likes to say, is that he sings from the heart.”
