Fiesta Day deserved prime time at fair

It’s the day after your birthday – of which 7 hours were spent covering boxing matches.

Your assignment is simple: Go to the final day of The Big Fresno Fair and take a few photos of activities. Shouldn’t have taken more than 45 minutes to complete.

Yet, 5½ hours go by and you’re still shooting away!

What happened?

Blame it all on La Dasa, along with Gabriela Sepúlveda, Miguel Aguirre, and Mariachi Oro de México.

Why?

Because their mid-afternoon performance at the Paul Paul Theatre is exactly what the fair should be about.

E-n-t-e-r-t-a-i-n-m-e-n-t. Pure.

Too bad these acts weren’t booked for the evening when more folks would have probably showed up without battling an unrelenting sun.

The few souls who braved the weather were well-rewarded with hours of laughs and high quality music where one could escape their worries.

Let’s start with Dasahev López Saavedra, a 32-year-old banda singer from Hermosillo, Sonora, México.

“Bear with me. I have never performed with this group before,” El Dasa informed his audience with me, we haven’t performed together that much,” El Dasa informed his audience while the 13-piece banda took a brief break from the hurricane-like speed that accompanied the soloist as he whirled, pranced,and leaped.

El Dasa constantly flashed a million-dollar smile while clearly breaking the speed limit on banda standards. It’s a style that has won him fans since he broke into the music industry as a 15-year-old lead singer for Banda Costa Azul.

You probably didn’t know it, but he was eliminated in the second round of ‘La Academia 6: Última Generación.’ That’s when he decided to move to Los Angeles, where Vicente Fernandez hired him as his driver. El Dasa would sing for Chente.

NBC Universal’s 2016 series ‘El Vato’ was based on El Dasa’s life. He played the lead role.

Sunday at the Fresno fair, El Dasa (he was named after a Russian goalkeeper by his soccer-mad father) showed the flair that has made him a favorite for banda fans.

Next, meet Gabriela Sepulveda. The California native whose parents are of Mexican and Chilean descent has competed in music reality shows in English and Spanish - ‘American Idol’ and ‘La Voz Kids.’

Like El Dasa, she has also been in television having played Jenni Rivera’s youngest daughter in the Telemundo series ‘Jenni Rivera: La Mariposa del Barrio.’

Sunday, she demonstrated the talent and voice that could be the future of ranchera music, a genre that has long been dominated by male singers.

Backed by Sacramento’s Mariachi de Oro, Sepulveda put her unique spin on standards like ‘Mexico Lindo y Querido,’ ‘El Sauce y el Palma,’ and the Selena-inspired ‘Como la Flor.’

She’s only 22 years old!

But she’s a veteran in singing the national anthem at professional sporting events.

If only she and El Dasa had been ready for prime time at the fair.

Esta historia fue publicada originalmente el 27 de octubre de 2021, 1:31 p. m. with the headline "Fiesta Day deserved prime time at fair."