Fernandez Does Double Duty with Pop, Ranchera CDs Leila Cobo - Reuters go to original October 10, 2009
Alejandro Fernandez A Manos Llenas En Vivo (Jalisco En Vivo 09 Guadalajara)
Miami - Music superstar Alejandro Fernandez stood before a crowd of nearly 200,000 in his hometown of Guadalajara this summer, performing one of two massive free concerts he organized to spur tourism to Mexico after the outbreak of swine flu. A slew of stars, including Gloria Estefan, Enrique Iglesias and Luis Fonsi, took the stage with Fernandez in an impressive show of support. As far as free shows go, it was unprecedented in the annals of Latin pop. And then, the coup. Fernandez took the stage dressed in charro garb, the traditional mariachi outfit of tight, adorned pants and jacket and wide sombrero and invited his father, icon Vicente Fernandez, onstage for a mariachi set. In an instant, Fernandez went from pop star to ranchera symbol. Those dual roles have been central to his two-decade-old recording career. Now, Fernandez is preparing the simultaneous release of a ranchero album and a pop album, each with different tracks and different producers. "Dos Mundos Tradicion" and "Dos Mundos Evolucion" will hit stores December 8, with the pop album out on Universal Music Latino and the ranchera album out on Fonovisa, sister labels under Universal Music Latin Entertainment (UMLE). In the lead-up to the dual release, Fernandez is doing double duty as a singer of ranchera music and one of Latin music's leading pop stars. Billboard: Why release two albums simultaneously? Alejandro Fernandez: We planned it to attack the two markets and the two targets. Normally, when you release an album in one genre, it takes at least three years to return to it, and you could lose your other audience. What we wanted to do was reach both markets at the same time. I hadn't recorded a Mexican album in almost six years, and I had that need to do it -- and I think the fans were anxious for it as well. Although I've done very well with pop, and in a way, the pop that we do sounds very Mexican. Billboard: Your Mexican concerts in your home state of Jalisco to promote tourism were a huge success. Did their planning have anything to do with your albums? Fernandez: No. That was about supporting the secretary of tourism, particularly because Guadalajara was going through a very rough time. And then, with the swine flu, no one really knew what could happen. What we wanted to do was tell the world that everything was OK. Billboard: You play almost every weekend, and you play many shows during Mexican festivities around the country and in palenques (the circular theaters found in many Mexican cities that can seat up to 15,000), but you also perform in arenas and theaters. Are the shows completely different? Fernandez: The theatrical presentations have far more production value, but the vibe that you have live in a palenque is incomparable. It becomes addictive. Those concerts are more relaxed, more bohemian. You can tell that people are really there to enjoy themselves. We also play pop in the palenque shows, but we don't have any changes. I perform dressed in charro garb the entire time. But we do have great lighting production, screens, that kind of thing. Billboard: Initially you were thinking of releasing only a pop album, and then you had an encounter with producer/songwriter Joan Sebastian. What can you say about that? Fernandez: We knew we wanted to record a ranchero album. In fact, we'd thought about Joan Sebastian (to produce it), but then he did the album for my father and we shelved that option. As we were looking for a ranchero producer, Joan came up to me during a show in a palenque and said, "Alex, I've come to say hello and to tell you I want to do an album with you. It's something I've been planning for a long time." And I said, "Oh, come on!" Because we didn't want to repeat (what my father had done). And he said, "No, no, no, Alex. I have 11 songs. Let me play them for you and you tell me if they sound like your dad's." And he'd brought a CD player and he played the songs, and my jaw dropped. They were totally different from what he'd done with my dad. So I had to do it. And on the other end, the pop album was already well on its way. Billboard: Some of the songs aren't traditional mariachi. Some tracks sound almost country. Fernandez: It's a universal mix. That's why I say that what we did was bring pop closer to Mexican music and Mexican music closer to pop. But there are songs that are totally mariachi. And you do hear the mariachi in full, but performed in a different way and with different instruments. Billboard: When you record pop and ranchero, do you have to be in a different mind-set to do each? Fernandez: You sing them in a completely different way. They are two completely different genres. Ranchero is stronger, more passionate, it has more energy. If you sing a pop song in that manner, it doesn't sound well. You really have to change your mental channel when you go from ranchero to pop. But with this album, doing two sets of material, truth is, I'm exhausted. Billboard: Could you live, say, in Miami? Fernandez: For a bit. Maybe on vacation for four, five months. But leave behind Mexico, my home, my roots and all my culture? That would be hard. (Editing by SheriLinden at Reuters)
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Entertainment | October 2009 
Leila Cobo - Reuters
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