A Mexicanization of Mexican-American music, fueled by:
NAFTA and immigration
Border militarization (even before Trump)
Anti-immigrant laws (like Proposition 227 in 1998, California and SB
1070 in 2010, Arizona)
Consolidation of cartels and intensification of drug war
Consolidation of music industry (now, Universal, Sony, and Warner - formerly EMI as well)
Tejano (and Selena Quintanilla)
The Onda Grupera - a wave of pop groups from the Mexican music industry, like Los Bukis, was an important influence on Selena.A second influence, from northern Mexico, is a kind of dance music called cumbia (originally from Colombia, but Meicanized sonce the early 1980s).
Grupera and cumbia were both influences on the freakishly talented Selena Quintanilla. But so was US music. Selena's father Abraham, who organized Selena's group, was a former rock and roller, and Selena herself was English-dominant.
But
her story is more complicated than talent, involving the familiar story
of discrimination against Mexican-Americans in the US music industry,
and the consolidation of the Latin music industry in the US - and the
troubled place of "Mexican Regional" and Tejano music within that.
AS Tejano groups (like Selena) were gobbled up by major labels in both the US and Mexico, groups like La Mafia, of Houston, Texas, founded in the 1990s, started to tour extensively in Mexico
Norteño
Accordion-driven music, often corridos, had remained popular in Northern Mexico, and became increasinly popular in the US with recent migrants, and as even longer-standing populations began to feel more racialized by anti-immigration forces in the US.
Accordion-driven music, often corridos, had remained popular in Northern Mexico, and became increasinly popular in the US with recent migrants, and as even longer-standing populations began to feel more racialized by anti-immigration forces in the US.
The tremendous Tigres del Norte:
The new corridos, like "Contrabando y Traición" (better known as "Camelia la Tejana"). "Contrabando"is fictional, and it updates the corrido for the drug economy, but it is in many ways keeps up the forms of the old corridos in its lyrics. We'll come back to Narcocorridos in a second...
The new corridos, like "Contrabando y Traición" (better known as "Camelia la Tejana"). "Contrabando"is fictional, and it updates the corrido for the drug economy, but it is in many ways keeps up the forms of the old corridos in its lyrics. We'll come back to Narcocorridos in a second...
Banda and its offspring
Remember banda? This was the other German-Czech influnced northenr Mexican form aside from accordion-based conjuntos. This was less popular in the US southwest than in northwestern Mexico, where it continued as a local tradition, that only occasionally popped up in the mainstream Mexican music industry.
Tecno-banda (a grupera version of banda from the late 1980s-early 1990s)
The acrobatic Quebradita dance, was how Mexicans and Mexican-Americans danced banda in places like Los Angeles and Chicago, and the dance became popular in Mexico itself. Quebradita was hugely popular in both countries in the 1990s.
Duranguense
- the name refers to the north-central Mexican state of Durango (a traditional home of banda), but
applied to music it's actually fast, semi-synthesized banda music from Chicago (often by migrants from Durnago) ,
taking up Mexican styles and recontextualizing them for Mexican American
Chicago in the 2000s.
Another
new Mexican-American local scene is "hyphy" (or "jai-fi" in Spanish spelling), a
north California slang word meaning "hyper." It's basically super-fast corridos that you dance jumping up-and-down, kind of spazzing out. Right? O sea: hyphy…
Another important Mexican musics movement is not a movement but a single singer who is one of the most popular singers in both Mexico and the Mexican-American US - Long Beach, California's Jenni Rivera. Jenny one of 6 children of two undocumented parents. She had a hard life: a teenage mother at 15 who had to work at the flea market to support herself and nonetheless finished high school (and was valedictorian), she would suffer domestic violence, legal wrangle sixth managers and drama. She was known for not taking nonsense and her humongous voice, which gave real feeling to songs of love, loss, infidelity, and anger. The diva to end all divas, she has songs about being a "Partygirl, Rebel and Insolent," about being - not ballsy - but having "Ovaries," and a song telling an ex to "Go Fuck Your Mother."
Narcorridos
Narcocorridos are very popular on both sides of the border, including for people with no relationship or particualr desire for a relationship with the actual drug trade. But if some are merely aggressive fantasy, many, particularly in Mexico itself, decry the narcorrido's violence and use as a tool for glamorizing a deadly lifestyle.
The great Chalino Sánchez was one of theearlt corridistas to speacialize in corridos for the drug trade.
Some of the narcocorridos celebrate the courage, humility and heroism of a particular cartel leader, and their composers were often directly patronized by that person...
Others celebrate the catastrophic violence that cartels are able to visit on their enemies.
Like gangsta rap, with which it is in many ways comparable, some of these are clearly posturing, but some singers have gotten wrapped up in the wars between their patrons, as with Valentín Elizondo, below, is only one of the many corrido singers who were assassinated.
Narcocorridos are very popular on both sides of the border, including for people with no relationship or particualr desire for a relationship with the actual drug trade. But if some are merely aggressive fantasy, many, particularly in Mexico itself, decry the narcorrido's violence and use as a tool for glamorizing a deadly lifestyle.
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