Legend’s Son Finds His Own Way

Tens of millions of albums bought in the U.S. and Mexico do not lie. Singer Alejandro Fernandez is loved.

To feel this love, attend a performance, like his recent show at the Anaheim Convention Center. The fans come, wrapped in suits and gowns, clutching flowers in trembling fists, humble pilgrims before their idol.

But to understand all that Fernandez represents, sit in the empty auditorium during sound check. There, he paces in jeans and a baseball cap, slouch-shouldered and, by his own estimation, timid. His back is to the seats. If it weren’t for this ancient, unearthly tenor coiled deep within his 28-year-old body, he might not be here at all.

You must understand. Alejandro Fernandez was not raised for such a modern wardrobe or soft emotions. As one of three sons born to the legendary Mexican ranchera singer Vicente Fernandez, a national symbol to many, Alejandro--the only singer of the lot--carries not just the burden of his father’s fame, but also of Mexico’s very identity on his shoulders.

Bookish and introverted where his father is stormy and proud, Alejandro says he never wanted to be a singer. Singers abandoned their families for weeks to perform. Singers weren’t there when you needed them.

During sound check, he pulls a tiny girl onto the stage who sneaked in with her mother. It’s her birthday. Tenderly, he sings to her, holds her hand, thinking of his own children, far away in Guadalajara.

When Alejandro was 4 years old, Vicente pushed him on stage to sing before a crowd. Alejandro stood in horror as his dad left him alone in the spotlight. He froze, then cried. Vicente, gun holster tight around his hips, spurs clicking, came to the rescue amid a swirl of violins, a compassionate Mexican cowboy from another time. A hero.

The years passed and the father wept in song of his difficult rising from the streets of Guadalajara to national superstar. The son watched and admired as sons will do--as good Mexican sons will do in particular.

But outside the windows of the family mansion, beyond the constant barrage of flashbulbs popping in the bushes, Mexico was changing, becoming younger, more urban, more global, more violent. The number of radio stations devoted to ranchera music diminished, until there were more in Southern California than in all of Mexico, and Black Sabbath drew larger crowds in Mexico City than Vicente himself.

All the while, Alejandro felt his own voice, caught in his throat like a scream. He left it there, silent. He didn’t want to be a singer.

But he was one. An amazing one.

At 19, Alejandro began to study architecture.

“My dad sacrificed so much to be a singer,” he says, speaking in a tired whisper from his hotel room the day after the show. “He was so tired, always away from his family, and I said to myself, ‘Why kill myself for this?’ No, no, no, no, no. Why? I’d rather be here with my family, dedicated to my career.”

But, as he’d done 15 years before, Vicente invited him to sing, in this case to record a duet. Alejandro obliged.

The people heard Alejandro and gasped. They’d thought Vicente was the last great ranchera singer. They were wrong.

Some listeners believed, guiltily perhaps, that Alejandro might even supplant Vicente in the pantheon of great ranchera singers--alongside Jorge Negrete, Pedro Infante and Javier Solis.

A Musical Career That ‘Just Happened’

Sony Discos executives in Mexico begged Alejandro to record. His self-titled album, recorded in 1991, sold millions of copies, and paved the way for four more ranchera albums that did likewise.

“It was out of my hands,” says Alejandro. “I didn’t plan it. It just happened.”

Alejandro became one of the few young Mexican singers to devote himself entirely to the ranchera, which had by the early ‘90s been relegated mainly to museums, and resonated more with nostalgic immigrants than with people in Mexico--where the median age is 23, and 61% of the population now lives in cities.

Through his youth and good looks, Alejandro managed to recruit a new generation of Mexicans and other Latinos worldwide to ranchera, something no one had ever done, by being a phenomenal singer and by understanding the power of the modern global media.

He married a woman named America, and they had a son and twin daughters. Alejandro brought the family with him on tour because he did not want to be like his father. Yet Mexico embraced Alejandro because, as a singer, he was like his father. And the father, like Mexico, was proud.

But it wouldn’t last.

In 1996, Alejandro decided to record an album of pop ballads, a decision that almost destroyed relations with his father.

Speaking in his dressing room before his Anaheim performance, he is gracious and polite and smells of expensive cologne. Recalling the strain of his father’s disapproval with his decision to record a pop album, Alejandro says, “It got to the point where we didn’t even talk anymore. He put this great distance between us.”

Father-Son Struggle Echoed Cultural Strife

To those outside of Mexico, such friction over a pop album might seem odd. But to those familiar with Mexican culture in the 1990s, the falling-out between father and son over a pop album was symbolic in every way of the struggles Mexico and her people faced.

Where Vicente is an enduring symbol of what Mexico believes it once was--philandering machos, pious ladies, rural haciendas and raw tequila guzzled without a twitch--Alejandro represents Mexico as it really is at the end of this century: a nation torn between the old and the new, fighting to embrace its cultural roots while clawing for a place in a modern global economy.

A nation with spurs on its basketball sneakers.

In 1993, when the North American Free Trade Agreement was adopted, Mexican critics of the agreement said it would give the U.S. too much control over Mexico’s economy, politics and, perhaps most importantly, culture.

So when father said to son he should not record a pop album, in Miami no less, what he was really saying was this: Real Mexicans are dedicated to Mexico, not to the globe. He believed Alejandro had abandoned his homeland and betrayed his father, who, in many eyes, was the ultimate symbol of Mexico.

Alejandro waited until the final mix of the pop album was done before playing it for his father.

“He liked it,” Alejandro recalls. “He congratulated me. . . . He was forced to eat his own words.”

It was 1997 when Alejandro’s pop debut, “Me Estoy Enamorando” (I’m Falling in Love), came out, and Mexico was busy dismantling trade barriers around the world. It is not a coincidence that the younger Fernandez began at that precise moment to see himself as a potential global player as well.

The album, which earned Alejandro a Grammy nomination, sold 10 times as many copies in the U.S. as the previous ranchera album--more than 1 million copies in the U.S. alone. Worldwide sales are estimated at close to 5 million copies.

But Alejandro made good on his promise to his father and Mexico that he would never abandon ranchera. He released his sixth ranchera album this year, and though it has sold only about 80,000 copies in the U.S. so far, he drew heavily from it at last weekend’s concert, performing with a nearly 20-piece mariachi ensemble, in traditional costume.

Committed to His Ranchera Roots

Dressed in full charro outfit, Alejandro seemed transported to another body, standing bravely at the edge of the stage, a captain at the helm of his ship. Feet wide, one hand aloft and the other squeezing the microphone, he filled the cavernous hall with his long, dramatic notes. His eyes scanned the crowd through the bright lights and there was no sign that this confident giant of ranchera had ever been a shy and silent child. Catapulted roses landed at his booted feet.

In spite of his commitment to ranchera, though, the biggest responses came when he sang his pop ballads, “Si Tu Supieras” and “Me Estoy Enamorando,” songs that made it onto radio in markets such as Miami, New York and Santo Domingo, where Mexican regional music is rarely heard.

To get from city to city, Alejandro rides in a private jet. When he’s not on the road, he says he lives “in a triangle between Guadalajara, Miami and Los Angeles.” His children live in Mexico with their mother, from whom he is separated, but he says that his children are his biggest priority.

Alejandro says Los Angeles is his favorite U.S. city, because it’s home to the film industry. Yes, he plans to venture into film, as his father did. But where Vicente acted in Spanish-language films, his son plans to do it in English.

Early next year, Alejandro will release his second pop album, recently finished in Miami with Latin music powerhouse Emilio Estefan and Colombian-born songwriter-producer Kike Santander, who also produced his pop debut.

“It’s going to be even more international than the last one,” he says with a grin. “With a more global feel and more upbeat rhythms.”

And how does his father feel about the new direction?

Alejandro laughs. “Well, he doesn’t like it. Now he thinks I should stick to pop ballads.”