Fernandez Remains a Rousing Champion of Mariachi

Perhaps mariachi’s greatest living legend, singer-actor Vicente Fernandez is a rarity among the genre.

He’s one of the very few performers who writes his own material, thus keeping alive a music that, like tango, often relies on old classics to attract an audience. And only the charismatic Fernandez, of course, would accept drinks from the audience in the middle of the show and borrow a cellular phone from a fan to have a chat between verses.

In the first of three near-capacity shows Friday night at the Universal Amphitheatre, the fiftysomething Fernandez looked and sounded as if he had sipped from a fountain of youth, offering pure, unadulterated ranchera music with enough of a personal twist to make it all sound unique.

Guanajuato’s Mariachi Chapala, which backed the singer, used an electric keyboard that worked best during the mid-tempo boleros, with a cowbell beat unheard of in mariachi music (it wasn’t salsa and they weren’t trying to sound like salsa, but you get the idea).

As far as Fernandez’s voice goes, twice he sang without a microphone. If you weren’t looking at the stage, it was hard to tell the difference. Even after all these years, it’s still that powerful.