For Mexican singer Camila Fernández, growing up in one of the most renowned mariachi dynasties, headed by her grandfather Vicente and her father Alejandro, also meant inheriting a female tradition that she learned from watching her mother and grandmother transform into “giants” on stage, a strength that today she seeks to pass on to new generations, starting with her own five-year-old daughter.
Watching her daughter grow up with children’s songs like ‘Baby Shark’ made the 28-year-old singer understand that mariachi needed a modern female voice to accompany girls like her, she told EFE in an interview on the occasion of her new single ‘Suéltame’.
“And where is she going to get the mariachi? Where are the mariachi songs that she’s going to sing going to be? So I said, ‘That’s my job,'” Fernandez says.
Camila Fernandez talks about her traditions within the ‘Fernandez Dynasty’.
But long before she thought about the girls who would listen to her songs, Fernández learned to inhabit mariachi by watching the women in her family occupy male-dominated stages.
Although today she is the first female public voice of the Fernández dynasty, Camila also grew up watching her mother and grandmother stand in front of mariachis made up of men with a “giant” and “indestructible” presence, a “powerful” image that since childhood she associated with legends of the genre such as Lucha Villa.
“My grandmother is 1.40 (meters) tall and up on stage(…) she looks gigantic. And I said: ‘I want to do that. I want to be that example. That’s why I dress up as a charra,” she says.
Fernández assures that he has been “breaking his head” for years to connect with younger audiences without losing the essence of mariachi.
His bet, he explains, is to build a “timeless” project, where ballads, heartbreak and Mexican tradition coexist.
“I want to speak to the new generations, I want them to hear a fresh mariachi,” says Fernandez, who found in ‘Suéltame’ the greatest reach of his more than 11-year career, with nearly two million plays in just weeks.
The song, which is a song about heartbreak and emotional vulnerability, reflects the mix of mariachi and ballad with which Fernandez has sought to build a more intimate and relatable voice within regional Mexican music.
“We can feel all the feelings on the planet because we are not robots (…) we are still human,” he says.
That honesty ended up connecting with his community of followers, whom he describes as “feisty people” and “strong women and men” who are looking for songs to suffer, fall in love or just “let off steam for a little while”.
“My motto is that it’s cheaper and more fun to go to my show than to therapy,” jokes Fernández, who in December will take his tour to Iowa, California and Illinois (USA), in addition to preparing new dates in Mexico “very soon”.
But first, the singer will once again share the stage with her father, Alejandro Fernández, during the September 15 celebrations in Las Vegas, the same venue where she made her debut in 2014 at the age of 16.
Between “stepmothers” and stepmothers
The singer says she feels grateful to continue being part of these concerts, where she has been able to connect with her “madrastras”, “comadres” and “amiguis”, women who for years followed her father’s career and who now find in her a feminine voice within the genre.
Today, she says, many approach her as if talking to “a lifelong friend” to find a song they can relate to.
“I love that (…) that they are listening to mariachi in the voice of a woman and in the voice of a Fernández,” she says.
Although that debt, he insists, was not only with the Mexican regional, but one that “I had pending for my daughter,” reported Agencia EFE.
Find out more at ‘QueOnnda.com’.
