In 2001 the Great Mexican Drug War was not yet in full swing. That didn’t happen until 2006 when President Felipe Calderon decided to take on the independent “cowboy cartels” with the Mexican Army. In 2001 Elijah Wald published Narcocorrido, a Journey Into The Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas. He had traveled through Mexico, in a way now that would be impossible, or at the least very inadvisable. That is he hitchhiked or rode buses, and not always the first class ones, but the second and third class as well…the kind that allow musicians and entertainers to play for tips from the passengers. The History of Mexico is in the music. The corridistas (corrido musicians) have been singing and declaiming to the people for a long, long time. And before them there were the minstrels and their more well of cousins, the troubadours that performed for the rich and elite. In the Middle Ages and even in present day Mexico, literacy is not that high. The balladeers were and in many ways still are the chroniclers and the founts of information, as well as providers of entertainment and many times, social commentators as well. Of course this could be dangerous and many a minstrel ended up in the stocks during the colonial period, flogged, or if luck would have it, just run out of town. The Church was just as dangerous as the secular authorities… and sometimes the more fearsome.
Of course these minstrels, balladeers, that in time became corrido singers, didn’t flirt with crossing the line and igniting repressive reaction just for the fun of it, or for whatever social consciousness they might have had at the time. The people loved to hear the powerful and mighty brought down a little bit, and to hear some of what was really going on…something resembling the truth. It would be hard to call it an art form, but in the modern world we have tabloid journals, that swing between gushing adoration of celebrities, be it sports, entertainment, politicians, or someone (usually female for some reason) that is famous just for being famous, and trashing and sordid revelations about the very same high and mighty. Here in the US we have these tabloids and a 24 hour news cycle that is increasingly tabloid, and internet and tv, and mobile internet and thousands of different distractions. In Mexico, in certain areas, not so much. Here the corridistas maintain much of their traditional function…For example from Narcocorrida, a narrative told by a band leader at an all night pachanga, at his hacienda
This related by “The Clown Prince” a corridista from near Monterey about a gig in a small mountain town:
Chapter 10 pg 148
Of Narcocorrido
“When we began to get known in this business, my brother and I rented a bar here, a cantina, because, logically in our business, we didn’t have telephones, and the bar did have a telephone. So we rented this bar for two years, but with the idea of having a telephone so people could reach us for jobs.
“One day a cabron came from south of the state, a place named Ejido Amaro: ‘Listen you Julian, I’ve come to hire you to come and entertain at the anniversary of the ejido.’
“’Yes of course.’
“So we agreed on the price, and we went there—-an almost inaccessible place. It was a struggle just to get there. There were a lot of people, and the man who hired me was some kind of a policeman, because they had improvised a police force there, armed with 30-30’s. I’ve always been scared of those kind of people. I’m scared of them because there are some who are cabrones who don’t reason. Fucking savages. As on this occasion. So we began to sing, and I see these policeman who were going around plastered with their rifles in peoples faces, clearing their way through the crowd, holding them by the barrel, all fucked up, they gotten shit-faced on mescal or who the hell knows what. And suddenly a cabron comes up and pulls out a goddamn pistol…{he mimes the guy waving the gun around}, and says “Sing me “Las Tres Tumbas,” cabron! Three times or else you die!”
“’La Chingada! That’s fine, but put down the gun. There’s no need to threaten me, cabron.’
“Well, get on with it, sing “Las Tres Tumbas” Go on.”
“We sang it three times, and he put his gun away and left. But the worst of it was that as soon as he left, another cabron came up , and said, El Bayo de Caro Blanco!” “Sing it for me cabrones!”
“And the worst of it was they didn’t threaten anyone but me!, they left the other cabrones alone. So there we are singing “El Bayo de Caro Blanco!” for that bastard, and then he went away. “This is a fucked-up mess here, “I said. “ I could get killed by one of these moronic sons of bitches.” But there we are. The style was to play a tune, then take a break. A little one minute intermission, because there were so few women we had to insert a parentheses so that the guys that were dancing could let go of the broads, so that some others could get them.
“Suddenly , two cabrones start shooting at each other in the middle of the damn dance, And the odd thing about it is that they discharged their ammunition, then grabbed each other by the hand and took shot after shot and jump after jump—the bastards were like grasshoppers—and the only bullet that hit a target, it was a kid that was close by. Watching us. He was watching the drummer, and it fucking caught him right in the chest. With all the crowd, they only hit the kid, they didn’t even hit each other. So the kid fell down and I went over, I got down off the stage there, damn it to look after him, and nobody was paying attention to the kid.
“Hey there’s a kid hurt here y la chingada….’
No, they didn’t budge, and we quit playing an up comes the cabron who hired us, completely shit faced already, and says to me: “Listen, why aren’t you playing?”
“There’s a kid hurt here, how am I going to play?”
“No, leave the kid there, you have a contract with me.”
“Hijo de su pinche madre!” So back we go to singing, I left the kid there, it seems that his mother came and took him away. I don’t know how the mess turned out. So, finally the whole scene was over, and they paid us, and we got out like…
“And we never went back there. Afterward, I found out that that region. There was no group who wanted to go to that place, because they already knew what would happen. But a little while later, this bastard came into our cantina, the same cabron, and says to me. “Listen Julian, I’ve come to see you again…’
“No, you know what? Go off and fuck your mother, go tame that bunch of goddamn savages of yours. Your place there, I don’t even want to go over it on an airplane, cabron.’”
The life of a corrido singer, can be risky. Since the publication of Narcocorrido, some corridistas have lost their lives. Especially the local and regional writers that will do a song for hire, and if some gangster doesn’t like the vato (guy) being lauded in the song, well there you have an enemy. Other popular singers or their family members have fallen victim to crime, although some of that comes from late nights in nightclubs, and also the general chaos and lawlessness that rules Mexico now.
The book is not just a study and history of a musical form, but also a journey into the heart of Mexico and the people that make the music…and of the fans that make it possible. Regions have vast and subtle differences. The Rio Grande Valley and the northeastern border region in many ways gave birth to the corrido form. It’s popular here, but in a nostalgic kind of way. Compared to the Nortenos out in the deserts and mountains to the south, the modern day Tejano accordion sound has a definite bubble-gum sweetness. Not the same. Also it is a region that could be compared to a great caldo (beef soup) of sound as Hispanic-American culture collides with, and, at the same time colludes and mingles with Anglo-America.
There’s west coast and Los Angeles… The rough edge Sinaloa sound… Mexico City, the country that is a country within the country of Mexico. Also the political ballads of the revolutionary groups in Chiapas and elsewhere. The historical corridos of the Mexican Revolution.
Large portions of the book are transcribed from interviews of the corrido writers and singers themselves, along with many of their lyrics, both in Spanish, and translated to English.
Fortunately for us Elijah Wald got in under the wire. The research that went into this book would be very difficult to do today
The drug war that the Narcocorridistas sing about can’t be prettied up. It’s grim stuff. But it’s happening and la gente (the people) want to hear about it. Like much folk music, blues, real country music, and rap, and others, the charge has been made at one time or the other, that the songs glorify delinquency and criminal behavior, and are anti-social etc. There has been radio censorship in some places and condemnation from so called respectable society and publications
Elijah Wald writes: I tend to agree with the corridistas that while their songs are not the “most positive thing in the world”, they are not a significant cause of drug use and trafficking. The United States drug policy is so riddled with hypocrisy, so casually racist and oblivious to reality, that it is worthy of no respect. In a country that exalts wealth and celebrity while providing ever fewer chances for poor kids to get ahead, and that directs far more of it’s anti-drug funding to flashy military hardware than to treatment centers, it is delusional at best to blame pop music for the fact that many barrio youngsters want to become big-spending, gun-wielding narcos.
The rough edges, the uncompromising instrumentation and the in your face lyrics are at times harsh. But in this world north of the Rio Bravo (Rio Grande) where unreality rules, and the horrors of wars both internal and foreign are ignored or covered up, the world of the Narcocorrido may just be some of what we need. Well worth the read: “Narcocorrido, A Journey into The Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas” by Elijah Wald.
Hi to start with thank you for that post Narcocorrido: A Journey Into The Music of Drugs, Guns and Guerrilas Review | Writers of the Rio Grande, it was a terrific read, I aslo happen to fully agree with you, now for the cheeky part could you tell me where you host your internet site it loads extremely rapidly for me. My existing hosting company is terrible, and it has really slow response times, thanks very much.
Thank you for your input, Rashid. Writers Of The Riio Grande uses Gator Hosting
Hi.
I think this is a great blog and a big effort to promote the border arts.
I´ve read your posts and made a comment before, about The black minutes, but it didn´t appear in your blog. Anyhow, about this post: you say: (…) In the Middle Ages and even in present day Mexico, literacy is not that high (…). I wonder… México didin´t go trough the Middle Ages cause, the same momment Europe experienced the beginning of Renaisance, the very end of the Middle Ages, Mexico was experiencing its last Flower war, the barbaric war games that local tribes practiced to get prisoners to sacriface.
In the other hand, you may be just trying to say that Mexico´s educational level has always been poor, wich I agree. Please, clarify this to me if you will… TY
Thanks for the observation, Ricardo. Obviously Mexico didn’t go through the same Middle Ages as did Spain and Europe. However, culturally and musically Mexico and Latin America are heir to the traditions and styles of the regions of Spain in the Middle Ages and the Renaisance. The Mestizo people are in the main Native American racially, but cuturally are more like the conquering Spanish. In a literal sense,the reality of the European Middle Ages and the Meso-American Middle Ages don’t match up chronologically. While Europe was pulling out of it’s darker times and feudalism and the church was loosening a little of its death grip, Mexico was still in its dark ages, or more like its parallel Roman Empire stage with all of it’s horrors and bloodletting…But on steriods….
Anyway, my context here was music.
You brought up a lot interesting points
Thank you for the reply, Edgardo. Obviously you were pointing to something different to feudalism and I didn´t follow you the same way, misundestanding what you wrote. But I truly want to thank you for the observation and the clarification of my question.
It´s true that corridos are something similar to the ballads sung by minstrels and perhaps the content of those ballads was so bloody as narcocorridos are today. There is a long tradition of worship to the outlaws in Mexico and, maybe, in all the Americas. It might be related to the distrust to our goverments. But that´s a very simple argument.
I live in Juárez, Chiahuahua. I have friends (doctors as me some of them) that told me that, when they were kids, played to be narcos and policeman. No one wanted to be a policeman. It´s shameful.
I wish you to go to my blog http://www.lecturaexperimental.blogspot.com and read my posts. It will be helpful to have the opinion of a more experienced writer. Thank you again.