Ranchera is the twentieth-century Mexican song genre that sings the emotions of the rancho (the country ranch or homestead): heartbreak, drink, longing for home, machismo, and its self-mockery. It can be accompanied by a full mariachi ensemble or, in its 'trio' version, by only a guitar. Three time signatures dominate: the 3/4 waltz, the 2/4 polka, and the slow 2/4 bolero form. The singing style tolerates — indeed requires — crying, gritos, sustained melisma, and the deliberate crack in the voice. Technical polish is not the metric. The metric is whether the song makes the listener tear up.

After the Mexican Revolution (1910–20) urbanised huge numbers of former farmers, the ranchera crystallised as the song of the displaced. The defining composer was José Alfredo Jiménez (1926–73), a self-taught guitarist from Dolores Hidalgo who could not read music but wrote over 300 songs, including 'El Rey', 'Ella', and 'Camino de Guanajuato' — still sung nightly in Mexican karaoke bars. The interpretive tradition was set by Lola Beltrán in the 1930s–40s and revolutionised in 1961 when Chavela Vargas (1919–2012) started performing what had been men's ranchera songs, upending the gender conventions of the form.

In José Alfredo Jiménez's own performances the voice sometimes wavers, the pitch drifts, the tone cracks. That the songs still work is because the poetry itself and the simple three-chord harmonic frame are made for group singing. Vicente Fernández's 'Volver Volver' turns the three-times 'Volver, volver, volver...' of the chorus into a stamina test that audiences cheer through. Chavela Vargas's 1991 recording of 'La Llorona' (she was 72) subverts the entire genre by having a woman sing what had been a man's heartbreak — Pedro Almodóvar's films (Kika 1993, Talk to Her 2002) exported that reading to the world.

Vicente Fernández, 'Volver Volver' (1972). Then José Alfredo Jiménez himself singing 'El Rey' (1971), for the raw, unmediated composer's voice. Chavela Vargas, 'La Llorona' (1991), for the feminist reinterpretation. For a contemporary interpreter, Lila Downs's 2010s recordings. Late night, drink to hand, lyrics up on another screen: the traditional posture for ranchera.

José Alfredo Jiménez never learned to write musical notation. He sang his songs to a notation assistant who transcribed them. His grave in Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato, is a giant stone charro (cowboy) statue drawing tens of thousands of visitors annually. Chavela Vargas came out publicly as a lesbian in 1994 at age 75, and her career's second act became a living reinterpretation of ranchera through a queer lens. She died in Costa Rica in 2012 aged 93, having once said she would 'swim in the sky when I die.'