Power moves for Ángela Aguilar

The singer says her love of Mexican culture fuels romantic ballads in new album.

- JUSTINO AGUILA

Angela Aguilarmaybean elegant interpreter of musica Mexicana, a genre that her family has dominated for generations.

Yet when I sit across from the 21-year-old singer at a dining hall on Olvera Street in downtownL.A., she exudesa commanding diva spirit that is allher own.

It is a fierceness that surfaces most prominently when the conversation turns to the business of music, her family’s legacy and her recent marriage to young Mexican singer-songwriter Christian Nodal.

When it comes to her latest album, “Nadie Se Va Como Liegé,” Aguilar’s 12-song set ofromantic ballads, it’s clear the Latin Grammy-nominated singer is delving into music rooted in heartache; but she insists that the latest songs, colored by the agony of unrequited love, have nothing to do with her personal life.

“I’m not singing to anybody, I’m not answering to anybody,” Aguilar says. “I speak through music, but I’m not sending messages to anyone except to let people know of my love of Mexican culture.”

That pride for heritage also comes from being part of a prominent musical dynasty. Backed by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and director Enrico Lopez-Yanez, Aguilar will perform two nights at the Hollywood Bowl on Friday and Saturday with her famous family, including her hitmaker father Pepe and her brother Leonardo. Her late grandparents, Antonio Aguilar and Flor Silvestre, were icons in both music and films; her mother Aneliz Alvarez-Alcala, the matriarch of the family, oversees the family’s Machin Records.