They lift your spirits, prompt you to think, make you feel grateful and inspire you to do more. They connect you to our community, shining a spotlight on what's good about our city. They're stories that are Uniquely Milwaukee.
This Latine Heritage Month, we remember the lasting legacy of Mexican singer-songwriter Juan Gabriel, who touched generations of audiences with his powerful lyricism and magnetic energy. Known as “El Divo de Juarez,” he composed more than 1,800 songs and sold more than 100 million records before his death in 2016. In this episode, guest host Paula Lovo shares her memories of Gabriel and asked community members to do the same (thank you Alexa, Marielena, Miguel, Maura, Mara and Tiana).
Juan Gabriel feels like an apapacho — a hug for the soul and a soundtrack for any occasion. He accompanies you in moments of celebration and of heartbreak.
How is it that I — a late 20s, Midwest-born Latina — resonate so much with an artist born in the 1950s in Michoacán, Mexico? Maybe it's the vulnerability that emerges in his music. Or watching all those concerts on DVD my dad would play late into the night in the sala. Maybe it's just my chance to connect with my abuela and hear her own stories about the music (there was always a story).
Juan Gabriel, like Mexican/Costa Rican singer-songwriter Chavela Vargas, were icons that didn’t fit the mold of what was expected of them. Never revealing too much but leaving interviewers wondering. I loved that about him, this disinterest in giving people a label to place on him. “Take me as I show you.”
I have so many feelings and thoughts on what Juan Gabriel represented for me, and I knew I wasn’t alone in my admiration of him. I wanted to know what he represented for others. So I put a call out to the community and found my answer in their stories.
From Marielena: “ Juan Gabriel means authenticity to me. … When you listen to his music, you can literally feel the vibration of that emotion that he was transmitting through his voice. It means heritage. It means connection. It means surpassing beyond this physical world.”
From Miguel: “ Juan Gabriel is love and heartbreak and joy and desire, but also loss and Melancholy. … You could go from joy to tears to laughter to dancing with any one of his songs in any one of his shows.”
From Maura: “Juan Gabriel siempre te va a llevar. Te va a poner a disfrutar el momento, independientemente de qué sea. Y creo que se ha vuelto un ícono mexicano que como mexicanos nos hace sentir orgullosos.”
He’s a symbol of pride and helps you process life’s moments, both happy and sad, as Mara pointed out. “ Juan Gabriel significa llorar cuando eres niña por tu primer amor platónico, por ese niño que nunca te hizo caso.”
He brings you to tears when that boy didn’t pay you any mind as a schoolgirl. He gives new meaning to his music in hard moments, like he did for Alexa.
“I don't think it was until I was going through heartbreak that his song ‘Amor Eterno’ kind of really registered with me. It helped me through my process, and it helped me grieve my love and just remember the good times.”
He can even help us travel through time, as he did for Tiana.
“ Juan Gabriel makes me think of nostalgia in the sense of my childhood. Sitting on my grandfather's lap, listening to his music, helping him reverse the cassette tapes again so he can listen to the song, watching him and my grandmother in the kitchen swaying in their little 600-square-foot apartment where everything was easy. I didn't worry about bills, about anything in life — just watching my two favorite people swaying to his music.”
Hearing those experiences with Juan Gabriel made me realize that we all listen to his music because it connects us. It brings together generations, brings us back home to our grandparents’ house or our homeland hundreds of miles away. It brings us all together, and teaches us that life is meant to live and enjoy while we can.
