Weekend Reviews : Pop : Juan Gabriel Shows Substance

“Goodby quarrelsome gringos / You’re only good for war. / You believe God is white / But He’s darker than I. . . ,” sings Juan Gabriel in “Cancion 187” (“Song 187”), the story of a Mexican who returns home after bouts of discrimination in this country.

The tune is a highlight of Juan Gabriel’s latest album, “El Mexico que se nos fue” (“The Mexico That Left Us”), and it served as the emotional cornerstone of the hugely popular singer-songwriter’s sold-out concert Friday night at the Universal Amphitheatre.

Backed by a 34-piece band plus a mariachi orchestra and 16 folkloric dancers, Juan Gabriel offered in the song and elsewhere a moving commentary on his Mexican roots, including the destruction of rural life by industrialization. While this sociopolitical commentary might not be surprising at a rock en espan~ol concert, it is all too rare at a mainstream Latin show--and something of a breakthrough for Juan Gabriel himself.

Don’t get the idea that he has turned himself into a musical activist. The opening half of the two-hour set still consisted of his early, often corny mainstream pop.

The power of his more personal, second-half material didn’t just rest in politics, but in Juan Gabriel’s increased ability to write about serious themes in stark, uncompromising terms. It’s time that he begins focusing on stage more fully on the new, more liberating material rather than keep one foot planted in music that he has clearly outgrown.