Pepe Aguilar Gives Ranchera a Modern Lilt All His Own

A message for fans of traditional Mexican music: If you have so far failed to include Pepe Aguilar in your list of the genre’s great voices, it’s about time you do.

On Sunday at the Universal Amphitheatre, the son of singer Antonio Aguilar and actress Flor Silvestre demonstrated that he has developed an identity of his own, both as a performer and a bandleader.

Aided by musical director Manuel Casares, Aguilar has modernized the ranchera sound with the kind of tactful, unpretentious innovation that is rare in Latin music these days.

The strategy is as simple as it is effective: to preserve the authenticity of the material by enlisting a solid mariachi ensemble (in this case, the Mariachi El Zacatecano) while also enriching the arrangements with flute and saxophone solos, soft cushions of synthesizers and the occasional outburst of female choruses.

The result is a lilting sound that functions as a bridge between the conservative ranchera experience and the modern allure of the pop-as-aural-candy approach.

As a singer, Aguilar embodies the charro aesthetic to perfection. His eyes half closed, he stood in the middle of the Universal Amphitheatre stage, expressing the blood-dripping pain of ranchera with the stillness of a true stoic.

The two-hour performance combined the expected hits such as “Por Mujeres Como Tu,” with material from his new album, “Lo Grande de Los Grandes,” a tribute to the titans of ranchera crooning. His take on Vicente Fernandez on “Que Sepan Todos” and “Tu Camino y el Mio” was especially effective, proving that the future throne of traditional Mexican folk might very well belong to el sen~or Pepe.