Jose Feliciano’s “My Love for Mexico” CD Review

Jose Feliciano’s style has also found a nice blend with Mexican “ranchera”. The Puerto Rican Latin music legend has just launched his 3rd album dedicated to Mexico with the release of “My Love for Mexico”.

This album is almost a sequel of his previous “ranchera” music album “Con Mexico en el Corazon”. I consider both of these albums really nice gems of Mexican “ranchera” standards.

My father never liked Jose Feliciano’s singing. However, I did mostly because Jose developed a very unique style that blended his experience growing up in Puerto Rico and New York. He mixed English with Spanish and Spanish with English (like in “Feliz Navidad”). I liked more his moans, screams, and up-down intonations than his actual voice. But I started to pay more attention to his voice with his later “bolero” albums, including “Señor Bolero”, still noticing that he always brought elements of his pop and folk style to the “boleros”.

“My Love for Mexico” is Jose Feliciano’s 30th album in Spanish, beside the other 38 recordings he’s made in English. I have no idea why Feliciano would give this album a name in English, when he gave the previous “ranchera” music album a title in Spanish. The album includes 13 songs, 4 of which were written by Mexican late Latin music icon Jose Alfredo Jimenez. It also features duets with Mexican Latin music great Vicente Fernandez and with the group “Los Horoscopos de Durango”.

“My Love for Mexico” was released in January 2013 under the Universal Latino music label.

What I Liked About “My Love for Mexico”

• The 1st thing I like is that this album has lots of music as it contains 13 songs.
• The Mariachi band that backs Jose Feliciano is excellent. They play “rancheras” superbly and add a good festive feel to the album with well-timed Mariachi screams and short comments.

• I like how well Feliciano sings these “rancheras”. Although I could notice that perhaps Jose has lost an octave or so in his voice, he still sings very well and takes on some challenging falsettos with the same excellence as he did in 2008 with “Con Mexico en el Corazon”. Feliciano also inserts his brand-style screams and moans, but only in well-timed and appropriate times in the album.
• “My Love for Mexico” has great music selection; 4 songs where written by Jose Alfredo Jimenez (perhaps the best singer-songwriter of “ranchera” music of all time. The album also includes two nice duets with Los Horoscopos de Durango and with retiring Mexican “ranchera” star Vicente Fernandez.
• My favorites of “My Love for Mexico” are “Te Pido y Te Ruego”, which is a nice bolero ranchera music-style, with Jose Feliciano’s signature screams, as well as “Cielo Rojo” and “Pa’ Que Me Sirve la Vida” which are typical “ranchera” songs that bring out the best performance out of the Mariachi band as well as of Jose Feliciano.

Suggestions for Jose Feliciano About “My Love for Mexico”

There is not much to say here.

• I’ll mention again that age seemed to have taken a bit out of Jose Feliciano’s voice. However, this will be almost imperceptible to Feliciano’s fans.
• I’ll also mention that since this is a “ranchera” album there may not be enough musical diversity. If someone is thinking that way, I have to say in Jose Feliciano’s behalf that he did his best to bring variety to the album. Three of the songs are slow-paced, almost “ranchera” versions of boleros. In top of that, Feliciano added two duets, something he didn’t do in “Con Mexico en el Corazon”. So although “ranchera” albums may not seem to have a lot of musical variety, I give kudos to Feliciano bringing some variety to “My Love for Mexico” .

My Recommendation of “My Love for Mexico”

In my opinion “My Love for Mexico” is a beautiful “ranchera” album, just like “Con Mexico en el Corazon” is. There is a lot of good “ranchera” music in this album, and Jose Feliciano delivers it with great passion and adding his own singing style peculiarities.

I highly recommend this album to any “ranchera” music fan as well as to any Jose Feliciano fan.