Joan Sebastian
photo: julio enriquez · cc by 2.0 ↗José Manuel Figueroa, who performed as Joan Sebastian, was born in Juliantla, Guerrero, and spent his teenage years in a seminary before abandoning the priesthood for music. Over five decades and more than fifty albums he became one of regional Mexican music's most prolific songwriter-performers, moving between ranchera, banda, norteño, and huapango while also writing hundreds of songs recorded by other stars. Known as "El Poeta del Pueblo," he died in 2015, having spent as much of his career as a hitmaker for others as a headline act himself.
Fernández was, by Sebastian's own account, his mother's idol — he chose Fernández's "Tú Camino y el Mío" for his first public performance, and that ranchera vocal tradition anchors his own singing even as his songwriting ranges further afield.
listen forThe straight-ahead, unadorned ranchera phrasing under Sebastian's more theatrical songwriting traces back to that Fernández-idolizing childhood performance.