Pepe Aguilar was actually born into present enterprise in 1968, whereas his mother and father, Mexican singing and film superstars Antonio Aguilar and Flor Silvestre, have been on tour in Texas. He started singing within the household rodeo spectacular at age three, debuting at Madison Sq. Backyard. A 1978 recording of “El cantador,” a corrido popularized by Antonio Aguilar, captures younger “Pepito” singing together with his mother and father and his brother “Toñito” (Antonio Aguilar Jr.)
However the Texas-bred Aguilar’s teen spirit took the type of a rock band referred to as Equs, and he’s maintained a lifetime love for teams like Pink Floyd and The Who. These influences have contributed to his modern tackle the romantic ranchera that landed his songs on each Latin pop and Regional Mexican charts, igniting the profession of a Mexican American star who doesn’t consider in musical boundaries.
Take heed to Pepe Aguilar’s Por Una Mujer Bonita now.
Aguilar would later make plain his love for rock with a stay MTV Unplugged album, produced by Meme de Actual, a member of supreme Mexican different band Café Tacvba. However early in his profession, reportedly the results of his father’s opposition to his rock-and-roll goals, he modified course to “follow my heart and my passion.” As he put it: “My heart tells me to respect my traditions, to move forward with Mexican music – which is mariachi, banda, norteña.”
He nonetheless seemed the a part of a younger insurgent in a black cowboy hat and denims on the duvet of Pepe Aguilar con tambora, his lauded solo debut as a keeper of that Regional Mexican flame, from 1991. It’s a feisty album that features hangover-nursing songs like “Yo pago las otras”. However it was his easy vocal supply “Se me hace tarde” and different love serenades that attracted rapid consideration. Later within the decade, the only “Por mujeres como tú” established Aguilar as a brand new sort of crossover star. The music, a romantic ballad on which he displayed the seductive phrasing of Latin main males like Julio Iglesias or Luis Miguel, rose to quantity two on each Billboard’s Regional Mexican and Scorching Latin Songs chart. Showing on a number of Latin style charts would change into an indicator of his total profession.
Aguilar, who on most of his album covers has worn the tight, colourful charro fits recognized with Mexican horsemen and mariachis, rapidly established himself as what one critic referred to as a “traditional sound with modern appeal,” showing on stage with a band that expanded a traditional mariachi format with electrical in addition to acoustic guitar, drum package and keyboards. “I developed my sound by incorporating structures and instruments that weren’t used in regional Mexican music (in the 1990s),” Aguilar recalled in a 2019 interview.
On songs like “Me estoy acostumbrando a ti,” from 1998’s Por el amor de siempre, he heightened his attraction as a common entertainer, taking a mariachi band into the wee small hours of Sinatra territory with flourishing preparations and feminine back-up singers.
The prolific recording artist cemented that sound and his picture as a delicate crooner on the 1999 album Por una mujer bonita, whose title monitor is a serenade propelled by acoustic guitar and violin. The confectionary love plea “Perdonóme,” (“Forgive Me”) hit with a wider viewers that was embracing the Latin pop explosion that peaked with Ricky Martin’s look on the Grammy Awards; Aguilar would take house his personal Grammy for Por una mujer bonita on the Grammys in 2000, successful for Finest Mexican American Album. “Perdonóme” has change into probably the most in style songs of his profession and a Latin music traditional.
Aguilar has aptly been described as “a cowboy in love.” In a style typically characterised as macho, wherein revenge songs are a staple, he has no drawback swallowing his satisfaction. Apologies to girls for his conduct are frequent in his songs, going so far as to title one other monitor included on Por una mujer bonita: “Tenías razón” (“You Were Right.”)
All through his profession, Aguilar has embodied the evolution of Mexican conventional music. In 2016, upon the discharge of his album “No lo había dicho,” maybe his manufacturing with the clearest Latin rock sound, he instructed USA At present that “it is no longer necessary to do a mariachi-only album or a banda album. My audience understands that.”
Which doesn’t imply that Aguilar would ever put down the torch handed on to him by his father and different regional Mexican icons. He has ceaselessly carried out songs by Mexican greats, like Joan Sebastian’s “Enamorarse así.” In 2013, he recorded Lastima que sean ajenas, an album tribute to Vicente Fernandez that features hits by the ranchera large like “Por tu maldito amor.”
In fact Aguilar’s music has additionally paid homage to his father. On certainly one of his best-known songs, “El Zacatecano,” featured on Por un mujer bonita, he nostalgically sings of the northern Mexican state the place Antonio Aguilar was born (the elder Aguilar died in 2007). It opens with the strains:
Desde Zacatecas vengo
Para brindarles mi canto
Es la tierra de mi padre
Y la que yo quiero tanto
(I come from Zacatecas
To deliver you my music
It’s the land of my father
And the one which I so love)
“My father and I share respect for traditions, but not only musical ones,” Aguilar has mentioned. “Also family traditions, history, and certain ways of being that for us are essential.”
Aguilar has stored that way of life present by reviving his household’s rodeo present. The touring occasion encompasses a solid of rodeo riders, dancing horses, bulls, cows, singers, and musicians, starring Pepe Aguilar and his kids Ángela and Leonardo, who’ve every established their very own musical careers. In 2021, after the loss of life of matriarch Flor Silvestre, the household recorded a tv particular and album for a multi-generational viewers, titled México Hasta los Huesos.
The album encompasses a tracklist of best-known Mexican songs together with “La Llorona” and Antonio Aguilar’s traditional “Que me entierran con la banda,” concluding with “Mexico lindo y querido.”
“That’s the legacy, more than a person,” Aguilar mentioned upon receiving the Legacy honor on the Billboard Latin American Music Awards in 2023. “It’s the energy that represents regional Mexican music. Y viva México!”
Take heed to Pepe Aguilar’s Por Una Mujer Bonita now.
