FERNANDO DELGADILLO

"Y hoy hace un buen día

Para hablar de los que están aquí

Trazando a diario el bienestar

De todo aquel que vendrá..."

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“D”

Main Decade: 90’ss

Main Eras: Trova and Singer-Songwriters (1960-???)

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Key Members:

Fernando Delgadillo

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Key Songs:

Hoy Hace Un Buen Día, Julieta, Navegante, Con Cierto Aire a Ti, Entre Pairos y Derivas, Carta a Francia, Ensayo de Una Boca, Bajo Tu Pisada, No Se Olvida,  Evoluciones, Hoy Ten Miedo De Mi, Puede Que Pueda, Llamadas Anónimas, En la Floresta, Amor de Voceador, Vuelos, No Me Pidas Ser Tu Amigo, La Bañera, El Sol del Mediodía, Primera Estrella de la Tarde, A Tu Vuelta, Llovizna, Ay Amor!

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I first heard Fernando Delgadillo around 1996 at Peña Cuicacalli, a couple of years before the trova boom that launched him to fame, at least in Mexico. I remember going because Juanjo insisted. He already knew some of his songs and kept saying, "Come on, dude, this guy plays great, I already saw him live once." He convinced me by playing "Hoy Ten Miedo de Mi" on his guitar, after which I asked him to lend me the cassette, which turned out to be his first album.

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That was my first encounter with Trova, or something similar to it, even before Silvio Rodríguez. We convinced our parents, since we were still minors, and I went with my friend Juanjo to the legendary Peña Cuicacalli, which was the quintessential haven for Trova and new bands in Guadalajara, and which, unfortunately, has since closed. I still have the cover ticket, which was only 20 pesos. The venue was half-empty, with its dim lighting, cigarette smoke clouding the air, waiters who hadn't asked for ID before selling us beer, and the half-hour delay of the artist we were about to see. Suddenly, a guy rushed out the front door, carrying an old, patched-up acoustic guitar. He was very tall and broad-shouldered, though thin, with a forehead more prominent than he should have had for his age, long hair (what little he had), and an untucked plaid shirt. Instead of going straight to the stage through the dressing room, he walked through the crowd. Juanjo intercepted him as he passed us, since we were almost in front of the stage, and standing up, said, "Fernando!" He stopped and shook the hand my friend extended, then greeted me. Juanjo told him, “Sit down, man, we’ll buy you some beers,” and Delgadillo hesitated, smiled, and said in a Mexico City accent, “Man, I’m running late. Let me play a few songs and I’ll accept your invitation after the gig.” He jumped up on stage to start his show. Of course, Fernando left through the back door, leaving us wanting to chat with him after his performance, but the truth is, we didn’t have any more money to buy him even a glass of water.

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It doesn’t matter. That’s where my admiration for his music began, and the leap he would make from informal song to trova, first with Alejandro Filio, then with Silvio Rodríguez, and later with the rest of the great guitar masters. When Trova music became popular, Juanjo and I already had a vast repertoire of songs in the genre, and we'd already been nicknamed "Trovadictos" (even before the creation of the forum of the same name), which is how we began our tour of different cafes around the city. Ah, those were the days! And it all started that night.

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There aren't many details about Delgadillo's biography. Some say he was born in Aguascalientes in 1965 and moved to Mexico City when he was very young, but other sources say he's a native of Mexico City. He started playing the bombo drum in a traditional Andean music group. Later, he began composing his own songs, which he presented in various venues in Mexico City, also participating in several music workshops. Around '89 he formed SEIMUS (Society of Underground Urban Writers and Musicians) together with Gonzalo Ceja (another great Troubadour with whom he would later record Primera Estrella de la Tarde), Juan González and Rodrigo Solís (a tremendous urban poet whose texts I recommend you look for).

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In 1990, SEIMUS broke up, and Delgadillo released a couple of homemade cassettes, which he sold on buses or at his performances. These recordings were later released as a two-CD set in 2004 and contain much of the material from his early albums. He continued playing in bars and cafes in the capital, building his fanbase. In 1992, he compiled his best compositions to date on the album "Con Cierto Aire a Ti" (With a Certain Air for You), which includes many of his classics. He called his style "Canción Informal" (Informal Song) to avoid pigeonholing it as a traditional folk song. He invested the earnings from this excellent debut in recording "Crónicas de Bruno del Breñal" (Chronicles of Bruno of the Breñal) in 1994, a daring and experimental album that is more oral than musical, showcasing his lyrical ingenuity with impressive wordplay, placing the narrators in the Middle Ages and setting it to music in the style of medieval troubadours. I don't think it was very successful, and even today it's not an album that fans pay much attention to, nor does Delgadillo himself use it much in his performances. It's like a Mexico City version of The Canterbury Tales. I think it's good in its intention and for the ingenuity it shows, but musically it doesn't offer much.

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Then came "Desviación de La Canción Informal" (Deviation from the Informal Song), with which he added electric instrumentation to his acoustic base, but returning to the lyrical and compositional style of the first album and increasing his underground fanbase in Mexico City. In '95 he released "De Vuelos y De Sol" (Of Flights and Sun), with which he began to take off in the rest of the country, finally achieving mainstream success with "Primera Estrella de la Tarde" (First Star of the Afternoon) in '97, an album recorded with Gonzalo Ceja. This album brought him fame both in Mexico and abroad. That same year, he was invited to China for the Beijing International Song Festival, where he rubbed shoulders with some of the biggest names in the genre. Shortly after, he performed at the International Youth Festival in Havana, earning the respect and acceptance of the established figures of the Trova movement, even though his music wasn't technically Trova.

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Massive concerts and Trova music became definitively fashionable in 1998 with the release of "Entre Pairos y Derivas." While the album's musical quality noticeably declined, with the exception of the title track and a couple of other songs, its more commercial sound garnered him a large following of screaming young women who thought they knew something about Trova because they liked "Hoy Ten Miedo de Mi" (Today Be Afraid of Me). He presented this album to a sold-out crowd at the Metropolitan Theater, and shortly afterward, Silvio Rodríguez invited him to open for him at the National Auditorium, cementing his status as Mexico's best independent artist.

 

In 1999, he released two live albums, titled Febrero 13, which contain an excellent selection and performance of his best songs. The album was recorded in a small venue, and while Delgadillo's stage presence and sense of humor with his audience are evident, they are marred by the screams of the hysterical "Cowards," or girls who only come to hear "Today, Be Afraid of Me." The screams, even mid-song, severely detract from both albums. A third Febrero 13 was released in 2000 with another seven songs, some of them less well-known. This album was available for free download from Delgadillo's website. After that, his albums continued to show a decline in quality. Campo de Sueños in 2001 included some songs he had been playing live for some time but had never recorded in the studio, such as "Tu Prisa," but the rest of the new material was neither innovative nor as ingenious as his work from the 90s. In 2006, Parque Naucalli was released, followed in 2009 by Desde La Isla Del Olvido, confirming his declining popularity. However, the number of classics from his early LPs guaranteed him sold-out shows wherever he performed. For the record, a ticket that cost me 20 pesos in the front row back in 1996 now costs over 250 pesos in the upper levels of theaters that hold more than 4,000 people.

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In short, his dramatic decline in recent years, and the fact that only his most devoted fans still follow him, doesn't diminish the fact that he was a tremendous singer-songwriter in the early 90s. His early albums are excellent, with lyrics ranging from poetry to laughter, from urban portraits to social commentary. He'll hardly ever reach his former heights, but it's equally difficult to erase the profound mark he left on Mexican independent music.

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Ladies and gentlemen, Fernando Delgadillo No Se Olvida!

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By Corvan 

Aug/1/2011

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