Apotheosis. Exaltation to divine rank or stature; deification.
Mexican writer and academic Carlos Monsiváis described Juan Gabriel’s concert in the Mexican Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of The Fine Arts) as an “apotheosis” of the artist, someone who was already more than 20 years into his career. Comparing a concert with a rise to the divine rank might sound a little far-fetched at first, but when you delve into the details and take a second to genuinely listen to this iconic presentation, the description becomes more appropriate each time.
Many of you might be asking yourselves, “who even is Juan Gabriel?” as one is usually puzzled when a foreign name is pronounced. And I, as someone who is from Mexico, is ecstatic to tell you everything you need to know about one of the biggest and brightest stars in my country.
Juan Gabriel is one of the biggest icons (if not the biggest) of Mexican popular culture in all its history. Nearly everyone, old and young in the country, knows his name and has memorized a chorus to one of his songs. He is responsible for most of the biggest, most classic hits in Mexican pop culture such as “Querida” (“Honey”) and “Hasta Que Te Conocí” (“Until I Met You”), songs that have been covered time and time again, along with writing songs for 1500 other iconic Mexican and Spanish artists who have sung his compositions throughout the years, a number that pales in comparison to the 1800 songs he wrote before his death in 2016.
Juan Gabriel broke every record of popularity and attendance to his concerts.
Although these accomplishments are enough to realize how authentically extraordinary he is, we need to go back to his very beginning in this world to understand his myth. A boy born into a family of farmers in Alberto Aguilera Valadez in 1950’s Michoacán, Gabriel has a difficult life. After his reclusive and psychiatric father Gabriel accidentally caused an accidental wildfire, it eventually led to his mother moving him and his only sister to the other side of the country in Ciudad Juárez, where Alberto was sent to a School of Social Improvement for Minors when he was 5.
He spent 8 years of his life working and staying in the school, where he met Juan Contreras, a retired musician that taught him music enough, so Alberto could write his first song: “La Muerte del Palomo” (“The Death of the Pigeon”), before escaping the school at the age of 13.
In 1968, with more than 100 songs already written, Gabriel made his first attempts in music in several different cities and clubs. However, as he decided to jumpstart his career in Mexico City, he was wrongfully accused of theft and was put in the Palacio de Lecumberri, a penitentiary where he stayed for 18 months before being freed his imprisonment and the chains of unfortunate events in his life by the help of Mexican singer Enriqueta Jiménez. Jiménez took him to the director of RCA who, at the same time, took him to music producors Eduardo Magallanes and Enrique Okamura, who extended him his first professional contract and helped him record his first album, now going by the name who would be remembered by the whole country and the world throughout the rest of his life, a name inspired both by his father and his biggest teacher, Alberto Aguilera had a complex and difficult life full of difficulties, now it was time for Juan Gabriel to shine.
His first album, El Alma Joven, was released in 1971 sporting as its main single the song “No Tengo Dinero” (“I Do Not Have Money”), a song talking about the conflict that he had as a poor man to find love having “no money, nor anything to offer” in the words of the song. It was a song made by and for a marginalized section of the population on the country, that saw themselves picked apart and deemed as unlovable because of the socioeconomic condition they were born in, in the middle of a Mexican art industry that always have been built to showcase the rich and white as the only people with stories worth to be told, at the same time being the first song of a completely unknown artist. With all of that, it was his first huge success, selling more than 2 million copies and being covered in Japanese and Portuguese, the first in a really long and crescent line of success for the artist.
All throughout the 70s and 80s Juan Gabriel and his legend was only rising hit after hit, conquering the vernacular Mexican music genre with his hit songs “Se Me Olvidó Otra Vez” with the Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, and huge hits like “Querida” and “Ya lo Sé que Tu Te Vas” all of them ballads and songs about loss of love and different emotional situations, with an incredibly simple language but an amazing emotional depth that many people could connect with, hence their huge success. All of this he achieved as a singer and solo artist, but he also had a huge part in the Mexican and Latin music industry as a composer and producer, most notably for Spanish singer Rocío Dúrcal, whom he helped build most of her career in Mexico, as well as artists like Isabel Pantoja, Vicente Fernández and Ana Gabriel, solidifying himself as one of the biggest figures in Mexican and Hispanic culture.
However, even in the peak of his success, he wasn’t the usual icon, especially for Mexico.
Following the steps of his first song, he stood as a bastion for the marginalized side of the country; the “ranchera” culture that stood for the experiences and music of the people that lived on the countryside that was mostly poor and ignored by the government, as well as being an example of someone who rose against a deeply classist system in the country where people with less resources were and currently are treated as less human.
But he didn’t only stand against the classist conceptions of the country and its culture, he stood against the homophobia and stiff gender roles of the time.
In concerts and public presentations he was as playful as glamourous and as energetic as feminine, performing in gowns of bright colors filled with glitter, along with his tender lyrics of love and a very feminine voice delivery; this is incredibly rare, specially comparing it with icons of his time. Artists like José José and Vicente Fernandez, other iconic and historic figures in mexican music, were incredibly masculine both in their delivery as well as their performance and presentation; even showcasing some harmful stereotypes of masculinity in their lyrics, they were praised as womanizers and macho men, the young effeminate artist couldn’t be further from their type of masculinity, and still, he sold more records and filled more stadiums that all of the other macho artists together. Juan Gabriel was constantly questioned and scrutinized in his sexuality and presentation. He really couldn’t care less, though, the boldest statements he ever made about it were on an interview where he stated, regarding his feminine presentation and delivery, that for him “all art is feminine”, and when questioned directly if he was homosexual, he cleverly answered “you don’t ask what you see”. Needless to say, he effortlessly won the fight against all that bullcrap.
With all this background is that we arrive at 1990, the wake of a new decade, which would also be the last decade of the century. With all of the things that he had already achieved by that point, there was little that the artist could do that would be bigger than what he had already done. After almost two decades of career, Juan Gabriel was already more than consolidated as an icon in Mexican culture, especially popular culture, he was an icon by and for the people, he rose without the need to appeal to the standards of the time, and oftentimes directly going against them. He was already a huge hero of Mexican arts and music, but what’s the next step for a hero to become even greater in his journey? Of course, he needed to become a deity.
The idea was pitched by María Esther Pozo, the assistant of the director of the INBA (Spanish acronym for The Institute of Fine Arts): a popular artist performing in the highest house of arts in the country, the Palacio de Bellas Artes, a compound for the highest forms of art and culture in the country. It’s no surprise that the definition of “high culture” of most academics was an incredibly elitist and classist one, because for the entirety of its history the magisterial place was only used for presentations of operas and orchestral music (notably European forms of art, should be mentioned), never a conventional music concert, let alone a concert of a filthy popular artist.
Myriads of letters and complaints of disapproval arrived at the Institute as well as at the news of the moment, academics gasped in disbelief at what they considered sacrilegious towards what once was the house of the highest, most exclusive and (once again, European) forms of art, some considered it “a surrender to the star system of Televisa (one of the biggest entertainment companies of the country)”, but all of that was just a mask of what was really inside all of their complaints: they were outraged to even imagine the high art meddling with the mundane culture of the masses; in their heads, there was an impenetrable border between the popular and high art that could never be crossed.
This was, of course, a lie, a stupid and frail one at that, and they probably knew it, because they also knew that Juan Gabriel, an artist by and for the people, taking over the biggest and most important palace for their elitism, would finally destroy that frail lie, and they were terrified of that happening.
The director of the CONACULTA (Spanish acronym for National Council for the Arts and Culture), Victor Flores Oles, in the wake of the complaints, announced that all of the gains of the concert would be directed to funding the National Mexican Orchestra, to which Juan Gabriel also donated personally a million Mexican pesos of the time, because his selflessness was always part of his charm, and it couldn’t be left out of his deification. Still, the elitist and classist complaints coming from academics didn’t stop, they were even joined by the usual homophobia and misogyny that already surrounded the artist, but none of that could ever stop the Juarez’ Divo from performing in the most important culture precinct in the country. On the contrary, the controversy only grew the public presence of the concert more and more, with tickets selling out in only days and being resold from 7 to 30 thousand Mexican pesos at the time. It was the biggest and most anticipated event of that year in the country, it would later become the biggest of the decade, now being arguably the biggest cultural event in all of the country’s history.
Then, from the 9th all the way to the 12th of May of 1990, the apotheosis of Juan Gabriel, taking place in Bellas Artes, began.
The historic presentation begins, ironically enough, without the artist that was just about to be deified, but with an instrumental rendition of three hit songs by him, “No Discutamos”, “Mi Fracaso” and “Adiós Amor, Te Vas” in a potpourri style that transmits an almost kind of cinematic feel of expectation, setting up the historic and life-changing event that the public was about to experience, an event even bigger and grander than the place it was taking place in.
After that, Juan Gabriel enters the stage covered with a white full suit, sporting “the precise glitter” in the words of writer Monsiváis. And without much scandal (but the exact amount of flare), Juan Gabriel opens with the dramatic “Yo Te Perdono”, an intense song about not letting someone who hurt you in the past have power over you or your emotional state anymore, it’s one of those times where the placing feels almost poetic, considering all the controversy that the concert had in its preparation, and with Juan Gabriel singing to the top of his lungs that he forgives everyone who didn’t believe in him, one of the most important cultural events in Mexico’s history is officially opened.
After that, the artist brings a choir of boys from the Semjase, a school and shelter for boys that was funded by Juan Gabriel throughout its entire history, because the apotheosis would not be complete, once again, without the selfless and caring character of the icon, and in what would be the first (but definitely not the last) time that Juan Gabriel lent his microphone and platform to someone else to sing with him in the concert, they revised many of the artist’s first singles, such as the previously mentioned “Yo No Tengo Dinero” and “Me He Quedado Solo”, both songs from the artist’s first album, followed by a vocal and then instrumental performance (all performed by the boys) of “Buenos Días Señor Sol” one of the most friendly and beautiful singles of the artist.
Another couple of songs in, the orchestrated and live rendition of his 1982 hit “Ya Lo Sé Que Tú Te Vas” gives us one of the most epic and beautiful arrangements from Eduardo Magallanes, the producer who saw the shine on him before anybody, as well as an extended outro of the song, with signature changes and divine choirs that all rise together.
But what might be even more epic than that is the moment when, at the beginning of the first chorus, in a cheeky and playful tone, Juan Gabriel suggests the public that they sing with him, “so he’s not the only one with the opportunity to sing along with the National Symphonic Orchestra” and whispering into the microphone that “they won’t even realize”, getting to a point where Juan Gabriel stops singing and the public is left singing the entirety of the chorus by themselves, hundreds of people, probably with no music education at all, singing with the most important orchestra inside the most important precinct for culture and arts in the country. In the words of the same Monsiváis “if they paid for their ticket, they have the right to their voice and their memories”. This was the first but not the last moment this happened, in the song “Amor Eterno”, describing the love for a deceased mother, the public joined Juan Gabriel in a collective grief, and in the rendition of “Querida”, one of his biggest hits, the entirety of the song was sung almost solely by the public, even at the point where the director of the orchestra turned to signal the people where to sing.
All of this was amplified in an epic 25 minutes potpourri right in the middle of the concert that started with another timeless JuanGa hit “Hasta Que Te Conocí” that then went to cover songs from all the latitudes of Latin America, from Cuba to Venezuela, to rhythms of Brazil and a couple of Mexican classics, turning the entirety of the once silent and solemn place into a party for everyone who had the fortune to be in it, from the public to the orchestra to the mariachi that accompanied, all together in something more solemn and sacred than the walls the academics tried so hard to gate keep; the pounding of the hearts of the people and the floors of the whole place, while people with different backgrounds and stories all join together in pure joy and dance around music, beautiful, simple, popular music. All of this being commanded, of course, by the man that was already becoming more than that, Juan Gabriel, who also took the opportunity to crown the occasion by saying:
“Tonight I’m happy, and I would like to share with you my desire: that all the popular artists have the opportunity to come here because this place was built with the money of the people. And that there’s a place here for popular composers, because Beethoven and Mozart also were popular and they had their difficulties… I want to trust to you my biggest desire: that there’s opportunities for those unknown people that are roaming out there, and that they do good, far better than me that I had no education and that I was also alone, out there looking for the way to develop and overcome myself”
The concert ended with a couple more iconic and epic songs that he wrote either for him or other artists, a celebration of one of the biggest and brightest stars that Mexico has had, not only in its popular culture, but in its general history, and he could not have been more up for the task, even asides the significance and impact of the concert itself, Juan Gabriel was 40 years of age when the concert took place and had more than 20 years of experience behind him, and it shows. He is just so effortlessly charming and bright to see, he jokes with the public, he thanks them for singing his songs, he dances, swivels and he sings, oh does he sing. Only by using his voice he is capable of getting to the same level of the most important orchestra in the country, to command them and even surpass them at points, on top of all the great features he offers as a performer, he definitely had one of the best and most potent voices of all time. The last song that got a rendition in this iconic concert was a reprise of a song that also appeared at the beginning “Adios Amor, Te Vas.” And with that, Juan Gabriel won one more time, and once again, he did it without even trying.
The iconic presentation definitely was a win for Juan Gabriel, and a huge way to start the 30 years of career that were waiting for him, but most importantly, in those May nights of 1990, the culture, the people and the art in Mexico were the ones who won. The concert, and everything that came before and during it, was the only thing that was necessary to completely break the walls between the “high” and “low” culture, and the power that the lie provided to so many academics and pretentious artists. After him, several other popular artists visited Bellas Artes, and several other thousands of people got the opportunity to sing along with the most important orchestra of their country, that was funded with their taxes, in a place that they paid for.
And the concert, all of the videos and albums that came with it stand as a testament of one of the most important messages that anyone remotely interested in art should know:
Art is, always has been, and always should be, by and for everyone. Specially in the late-capitalistic world where we live in, where we’re led to believe once again that art, and specially “high art” is only something that the rich, privileged and white can access, we need to remember that art is something we all have the right to, because art is nothing but human experience, and as long as we are human, we all are going to have the right to make, experience and share art, no matter if we have education or money.
Juan Gabriel was a great artist, a great composer, and a fantastic public figure, and all of that he made by and for himself, a hero. But charisma, talent and pure charm weren’t the things that made him transcend that role. By performing in Bellas Artes against all the odds and attacks towards him, by succeeding and giving a voice to everyone who has fought and are still fighting, and by proving that even when it meant sacrificing himself and his reputation, there is something much greater to fight for than the systems (both physical and intellectual) oppressing marginalized people, Gabriel embarked on the journey of the classic Messiah.
And that is how his apotheosis, through the presentation in Bellas Artes, was finally complete.
I have linked a Spotify playlist of all the songs mentioned throughout the article both in and out of Bellas Artes here. I also greatly encourage anybody who reads this to dive a little deeper both on the concert and Juan Gabriel’s discography, because it has many incredible gems that everybody needs in their own playlists, and in their lives.
— Writer Eduardo Méndez Alcántar (miracle) can be reached at miraclegoodnight@hotmail.com. Follow him on instagram @_.m.iracle_ and Facebook Nube A La Francesa.
