Beyond his songs and his films, the legacy of Vicente Fernández, "The king of ranchera music", relies on their contributions to the emotionality of the Mexican.
"There is a legacy of emotional education, he does not invent it but he achieves its permanence in several generations, it is not only music or cinema, all his lyrics educate people emotionally, he is the heir of José Alfredo Jiménez", says in an interview with Efe the film critic, journalist and teacher Gerardo Gil.
"Too bad you’re alien", "Return Return", "Beautiful darling", "By your damn love"Among many other songs, they delineated and exported how love, pain, regret and spite are lived in Mexico through the lyrics of the singer who died this Sunday after being hospitalized for several weeks.
An idol of the people, a strong, tough man, rooted in his origins, but at the same time sensitive and humble, they surround the image of Mexican masculinity whose duality lived not only in the physicality of the Mexican charro, but in the tones of his impeccable voice.
"It is an interesting combination, an interpreter who is clearly a very determined, brave and brave guy, but who at the same time is capable of being broken by feelings that are internal and that would seem somewhat hidden, but who could still be a proud character", the music critic Noé Mercado tells Efe.
For Mercado, this interpretive capacity of Fernández and the good choice of his repertoire, connected him intimately with his audience, which was willing to be part of the "ritual" reflective of his songs in each presentation.
"His music almost generated a ritual with the public, it is not music that is listened to cold, it allows you to treat that interior not necessarily of revelry, but of introspective to remember the old loves, the betrayals", he comments.
NEED FOR AN IDOL
El Charro de Huentitán has in his repertoire more than 100 musical albums, more than 300 recorded songs and around 37 films, of which he was the producer of at least 22 titles.
Although the answer to the question that if the "Sinatra of ranchera music" He was a good actor or it is not imprecise, it is inescapable that his work in the cinema was an important part of his career and that his good performance led him to work with directors of the stature of José Estrada, Alberto Mariscal or Rafael Villaseñor Kuri.
"Vicente Fernández comes at a time when the Mexican film and music industry needed the creation of idols", says Gil, who confesses that Fernández is at the height of Mexican icons such as Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete or Javier Solís.
According to the critic, Chente was "a breath of fresh air" in a cinema that was in decline after the rise of the Golden Age.
"There is a series of metafiction of the characters he played and what in some way he means to people: coming from nowhere, achieving success, but not losing simplicity, that has to do with the psychology and deep aspirations of the Mexican.", considers Gil.
Although Fernández became the faithful portrait of the Mexican male with his strengths and weaknesses, he was not the first to create it.
"He does not invent the Mexican male, he knows how to exploit that image, he adopts or assumes the archetype and he does it very well, you have to have people in their context and in that context there is that image that he assumes", Gil points out.
THE ONLY PATTERN
Gerardo quotes the book "The tiger: Emilio Azcárraga and his empire Televisa" (2000) when mentioning the anecdote of the day in which Fernández rejected a job proposal to the most influential man in the Mexican media.
"Azcárraga Milmo invited him to do a telenovela and Fernández would accept, but the only requirement was to be the producer and associate with Televisa, to which Azcárraga replied: Televisa has no partners, and Fernández told him: Vicente has no bosses", remember.
Although he did not make soap operas, Fernández was the voice of the main themes of various productions with songs such as "That jealousy" Y "Forever", both written by Joan Sebastián.
With the absence of Fernández, there is a very large gap to fill in Mexican music.
"Its presence helped develop a contemporary musical stage, but in an iconic and legendary way it is an important game, even if there are still figures of this genre", Market ends.
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