‘Verdad’ Isn’t Your Father’s Ranchera

Mexican ranchera singer Alejandro Fernandez finds it amusing that in his country there are fewer radio stations dedicated to traditional Mexican music than there are now in Southern California.

“The phenomenon is probably because when you are in Mexico, you are surrounded by traditional music wherever you go,” said Fernandez, whose father is legendary ranchera singer Vicente Fernandez. “From infancy to old age, you can find a mariachi [group] in any corner of any street and hire them to play a song.”

After spending years working to become the rightful heir to his father’s throne as the premiere Mexican ranchera soloist, Fernandez is now exporting his musical heritage.

On the heels of an enormously successful pop ballad album, “Me Estoy Enamorando” (I’m Falling in Love), which he recorded with Emilio Estefan two years ago, Fernandez is on a General Motors-sponsored U.S. tour promoting his latest effort, “Mi Verdad” (My Truth).

Fernandez performs tonight at the Anaheim Convention Center.

General Motors is raising money through his tour for the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, the largest Latino granting organization in the country. GM has already generated $1 million for the fund over the last several years, and will donate another $1 for each person who visits a bilingual interactive GM display at the venue.

Fernandez concedes that the pop-laced ballads of “Me Estoy Enamorando”--not his ranchera interpretations--opened the door to the international stage for him.

The Estefan-produced album reportedly has sold more than 4 1/2 million copies worldwide. “Mi Verdad,” a return to Mexican traditional music, was released earlier this year, also on the Sony Latin label. The album has sold 1 million copies worldwide, the bulk of it in Mexico.

He compares the technical aspect of recording his latest album to being in an army.

“This new record is so stripped down that it’s like having to go into battle with a little rifle,” he said. “[Making] the last album was like having a bulletproof vest, hand-held anti-tank cannons, everything in the armory,” he said Thursday in a phone interview.

Stripped down or not, the album carries the neo-mariachi flavor that some U.S.-based groups, like Jose Hernandez’s Mariachi Sol de Mexico has dabbled in for years--an elegant traditional sound with a pop attitude.

“I didn’t want to come out with a record that sounded the same” as its predecessor, said Fernandez, whose pliant voice, though similar to his father’s, is distinct. “I didn’t want my fans to get tired of me. ‘Mi Verdad’ encases my entire seven years of [recording] experience. All my feelings about being a singer came out on this album.”

To return to ranchera--urban music of Mexico that’s usually melodramatic and sentimental--after such enormous commercial success with pop ballads was a little risky, he said. “But I’m always going to sing with a mariachi group and [wear] a charro suit.” He took off the popular Mexican cowboy outfit for the pop album, but put it back on for “Mi Verdad.”

The debonair singer carries in his voice the lament of hundreds of years of Mexican history. Like his father and the ranchera greats before him, Fernandez has a voice that reaches dramatic operatic tones that accentuate the text of the narrative songs and makes them Mexican.

Born in Mexico City, Fernandez grew up in Guadalajara, mariachi’s birthplace. By the time he was 19, Fernandez had released his first single. He was going to college to study architecture, but dropped out when his musical career started to take off.

Two years later, his first album, “Alejandro Fernandez,” brought him out of his father’s shadow. By his next album, “Piel de Nina” (A Girl’s Skin), Fernandez proved that he could rejuvenate rancheras and take possession of the genre for his own generation.

“I’m the son of a legend. From the day I was born I was around my father’s music, and the taste for Mexican music kept growing as I grew,” he said. “Everyone in my family listened to my father’s music.”

Fernandez is the first young singer to leave Mexico and try to promote traditional Mexican music on a worldwide scale. His father never had to leave the country for the rest of the world to appreciate it. In his father’s day, the 1950s, Mexico was at the height of the golden age of Mexican cinema, and such musicians as Jaime Negrete, Pedro Armendariz and Vicente Fernandez all were well-known outside their country.

Part of what has separated Alejandro Fernandez from other singers is the control he exerts in selecting songs. For each, Fernandez said he goes through some 300 songs from some of the best songwriters in Latin America. For the final 10 or 12 numbers that end up on the album, the singer looks for a little magic--not technical or compositional expertise.

“Sometimes a songwriter doesn’t even know how to play an instrument and he will sing it to me or simply narrate the song,” he said. “If that song makes my skin curl, then I choose it.”

He said he has learned that if a song touches him, it’s going to touch his listeners.

Fernandez likes to tweak classics as well. On the ballad “Como Quien Pierde Una Estrella” (Like Someone Losing a Star) from the album “Que Seas Muy Feliz,” he altered the sentiment of the song by making it more about losing a loved one than losing a lover.

Likewise with the ranchera favorite “Piel de Nina,” a ballad sung to a woman as a declaration of love. For concerts, Fernandez changes the lyrics slightly so it could be sung to anyone dear.

“I had my gemelitas--my little twin daughters--in mind when I changed the song,” he said, adding he also has a 6-year-old son. “This way, the ring fits on more than just one person.”

p.m. $50-$75. (714) 740-2000 (Ticketmaster).