Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas [Hardcover]

Elijah Wald (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 6, 2001

In the first full-length exploration of the contemporary Mexican corrido, award-winning author Elijah Wald blends a travel narrative with his search for the roots of this unusual and controversial genre -- a modern outlaw music that blends the sensibilities of medieval ballads with the edgy grit of gangsta rap. While opening up a rich musical world, this book paints a picture of modern Mexican culture as it is seen by the people in the streets: raw and romantic, old fashioned and revolutionary, violent and poetic.

Wald traveled through much of Mexico and the southwestern United States (mostly hitchhiking, with a guitar on his back) in order to find notorious corridistas. From international superstars sell millions of albums to rural singers documenting current events for their neighbors in the regions dominated by guerrilla war, Wald was able to visit these songwriters in their homes, trek up to mountain villages, explore the heartland of the Mexican drug traffic, and check out the scene in urban centers such as Los Angeles and Mexico City.

The corrido genre is famous for its hard-bitten songs of drug traffickers and gunfights, and also functions as a sort of musical newspaper, singing of government corruption, the lives of immigrants in the United States, and the battles of the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas. Since the days of the Mexican Revolution, corridos have been the musical voice of the poor and oppressed, but also a sensational actiongenre that has spawned dozens of his movies and has been attacked by conservative politiciana and anti-drug crusaders. Through largely unknown to English speakers, corridos top the Latin charts and dominate radio playlists both in the United States and points south.

Wald illustrates the power of this music and the subculture it has created. He provides in-depth looks at the songwriters who have transformed groups like the awesomely popular Tigres del Norte into enduring superstars, as well as the younger artists who are carrying the corrido into the twentyfirst century. In searching for the poetry and social protest behind the gaudy lyrics of powerful drug lords, Wald shows how popular music can remain the voice and "newspaper" of a people, even in a modern world ripe with globalization, electronic media, and gangsters who ship cocaine in 747s.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Guitar in hand, journalist and musician Wald (Josh White: Society Blues) takes a yearlong journey through Mexico and the southwestern U.S. tracking down composers and performers of the narcocorrido, a modern spinoff of the 19th-century Mexican folk ballad (corrido) that combines the traditional accompaniment of accordion and 12-string guitar (bajo sexto) with markedly current lyrics. Gone are the old "song stories" celebrating heroic generals and lost battles of the Mexican revolution. Narcocorridos romanticize the drug trade the botched smugglings, fallen kingpins and dishonorable police. Wald interviews dozens of key players, from Angel Gonzalez, whose 1972 "Contrabando y Traiciin" ("Smuggling and Betrayal") is credited with launching the narco-trend, to the Rivera family, whose popular Los Angeles record label releases "songs that are notable for their lack of social consciousness, their willingness to push the limits of acceptability and baldly cash in on the most violent and nasty aspects of the drug trade." The style has become hugely popular in L.A. and northwestern Mexico and has spawned a narcoculture marked by cowboy hats, sports suits and gold chains. Unfortunately, Wald's narrow, first-person account reads like a travel journal, blithely moving from subject to subject, ignoring historical context. He glosses over the U.S. and Mexican governments' antidrug military campaigns, which disrupted the lives of many innocent civilians. Wald may think the history of U.S.-Mexican drug trafficking has been sufficiently recounted elsewhere, but explaining the narcocorrido without this background is like writing a history of the American protest song without discussing Vietnam. B&w photos not seen by PW.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Wald (Josh White: Society Blues) hitchhiked across Mexico in search of the modern corrido, a popular musical genre that reports the heroics of its subjects against the backdrop of norte?o-like harmonies in guitar and accordion. His book focuses especially on the narcocorrido, a genre of ballad that glorifies gun-toting drug lords in a Mexican version of gangsta rap with accordions. In this personalized account, the author interviews corrido songwriters Angel Gonz lez and Paulino Vargas, who scored hits with Los Tigres del Norte, the most popular group of the genre. He takes his readers to Culiacan, the heart of the Mexican drug business, where archetypal corridista Chalino S nchez immortalized drug traffickers and their exploits before his own assassination. Wald moves next to Los Angeles, where the Chalino-influenced Riveras reign as the first family of the narcocorrido. In the last part of the book, he locates the more politically minded corridistas Enrique Franco and Jesse Armenta, travels to the Rio Bravo and the Texas border for Old West-style corridos, and takes a bus to Mexico City and the mountains of southern Mexico, where little-known corridistas sing paeans to Zapatista guerrillas. Wald ends with a visit to Michoacan, the southern Mexican drug capital, where he meets corrido legend Teodoro Bello. Half enthusiast and half ethnomusicologist, Wald offers an engaging, fascinating, and well-written account of a much-neglected musical style that will be irresistible to readers of all types. Dave Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Rayo; 1st edition (November 6, 2001)
• Language: Spanish
• ISBN-10: 0066210240
• ISBN-13: 978-0066210247
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,217,174 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

For information about Elijah Wald, his books, his recordings, his other writings, and so forth and so on, visit http://www.elijahwald.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent portrait of the Corrido music., July 8, 2003

By 

Jose Torres (Los Angeles, Ca.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas (Paperback)

Elijah Wald goes to Mexico in search of the roots of the corrido, and does a superb job as he finds and talks to the main composers and singers of the true and authentic mexican music. the book it's direct and extremely enjoyable. I read it in one afternoon and was unable to put it down until I finished it all.
The book it's about the corrido, it is not a political document or passes judgements on anyone lifestyle, only when it pertains to the corrido itself then he goes and gives you a little taste of the political, social and economic factors that relate to the music and living conditions of the people involved. It is a great research job very well done and estremely informative, specially for the novice in this kind of music. A winner!

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I put aside all lesser pursuits for two nights to read it., December 31, 2001

By 

Ned Sublette (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas (Hardcover)

"Narcorridos" contains a wealth of previously unavailable information about the living culture of the corrido, a massively popular Mexican ballad form that seems to descend from the Castilian romance of the Middle Ages, typically telling stories of the bravery of men branded justly or unjustly as outlaws, or narrating sensational events in the local or international news.

In keeping with its traditions, the corrido in recent years evolved a new sub-genre which mythologizes the drug trafficker -- most vividly, through the figure of the singer Chalino Sánchez, whose violent career and death is central to the story.

Despite the book's name, it's about the world of music, not drugs. Though the narcocorrido phenomenon is thoroughly explored, the book is more than that. Wald is an experienced journalist who knows how to write a readable story. His comprehension of the culture is solid, and his narrative is entertaining and well-structured. He did a lot of his research hitchhiking around Mexico, and his personal narrative as investigator / questioner / outsider is deftly interwoven into the history and geography of the corrido.

If there were a prize for books of popular musicology this would be a strong contender. It has to be one of the best books on music published in the U.S. in 2001.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What this book is(among many other things)..., July 19, 2003

By 

Kelli (Seattle, WA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas (Hardcover)

I'd like to issue several warnings about this book:

1. It isn't an ethnomusicological manifesto. There will be no kinship studies(although there's plenty of kinship amongst the author and his subjects), no chapters dealing with forms, scales, microtones, etc., and there will be no schenkerian(sp?) analysis to the rear of the book. Heck, I don't think he even mentions the workings of the keying system of a diatonic accordeon! So, if you want to play this music, this book will not tell you how.

2. This isn't a feminist disection of the Narcocorrido, of the Mexican male/female dynamic, or the moral differences between "Chicanas" & "true" Mexicanas. I don't even think there's one chapter about whether El As or Valerio Longoria was more culturally sensitive to women's issues in their music. Best look to other books for these things, folks(or write it! I'd love to read it! Better yet, find some Mexican women and ask them! ;:^)

3. This isn't a socially moralist work. Mr.Wald doesn't go into the reasons why the Tigres or Tuchanes aren't fluent in English, don't wave the American flag, and why they play this "backward", provincial, "ethnic" music that doesn't try to "cross borders" or have "modern" rhythms, like their more socially conscious neighbors, N'sync, who don't sing about drugs, and serenade their chosen markets in a target-appropriate tongue(come on, El As, write me a corrido in English!) ;:^)

Anyway, with those things said, I'd like to say what Mr. Wald has done(in my view, of course). He's written a very personal, anecdotal book, one that can take you on an exciting adventure of discovery in first person. I've been to Sinaloa many times(and bought & smoked alot of la hierbia buena, in my younger days), and the atmosphere is perfect. Many of my friends in Sinaloa would consider themselves Valientes, and a number of them lived la vida. This book will safely take you through a compelling music and an equally captivating culture, without bogging you down with judgements. Make those yourself. If you want to know more about this music than the liner notes to an Arhoolie release will tell you, and about what Mexican people are actually listening to, this is the book for you.

If you don't own it, it's my opinion that your book collection is the lesser for it! ;:^)