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

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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: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #288,853 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 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!

9 of 10 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

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! ;:^)

30 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars El Corrido de Elias Wald., November 6, 2001

By	Watujel (San Antonio, Texas) - See all my reviews

On the 6th of November/year of 2001/Elijah Wald released a book/Its cover had a picture of a gun. He met a girl named Carmen/Said she was kinda "chunky"/Met a fat singer named Jenni/Said she looked really funky. Jenni's last name isn't Craig/But he didn't say how she really looks/Could it be that unlike Carmen/She might be reading his book? Said Jenni's dad is "anti-racist"/Though he prohibits English at home/Can you be a xenophobic anti-racist/Or does Wald just have rocks in his dome? Journalists who confront narco culture/Have been assassinated for what they tell us/But the author sees it differently/He's thinks they're just jealous. All those "ink-stained wretches"/Wald is dismissively taunting/They wish they could be Los Tucanes/Money and monobrow flaunting.

There are so many big things wrong with this book that I'm not going to even bother with its minor factual errors. First of all, one of the most obvious aspects of corridos is their extremely similar melodies and ways of ending. (Play the last 5 seconds of every song on a Tucanes corrido album to hear what I mean.) If you think you're going to get answers about where the melodies or chords came from, or why nearly all corrido practitioners conform to this musical norm, this book will disappoint.

If you want to know what women think of the glorification of violence and crime, or wonder why the only marginally famous female corridista is a Chicana, you will also be disappointed. Wald unquestioningly goes along with the relegation of Mexican women to ornamental roles, noticeable for their age and looks but not valued for their opinions.

Wald is simply not enough of an investigative reporter to challenge his sources. In his introduction, he actually says of his interview subjects: "I hope they are happy with the way I have described...them." They should be; he largely echoes their world view. Someone unfamiliar with the U.S. would get the idea from this book that we are uniformly blond-haired, blue-eyed intolerant quasi-fascists. While many corrido composers' commentaries on "gringos" are tainted by the fact that they know none, Wald could have provided a reality check. But the only non-Latino Americans he gives props to are Bill Clinton and himself.

His eagerness to play press agent for the corridistas results in an unfair attack on the Latin Grammys, which Wald criticizes for not airing enough regional Mexican acts on its CBS telecast. One of the chief crybabies of that episode was Los Tigres del Norte's polka king Jorge Hernandez, who after 33 years of living in this country, speaks only broken English and has never shown an iota of interest in selling to the English-speaking market. And this guy is entitled to appear on prime time instead of artists who crack the Hot 100, record modern rhythms, sing in more than one language and work to market themselves internationally? I wonder if Wald is aware that N'Sync with its "Yo Te Voy a Amar" is far more likely to appear on Latin American TV than Brooks & Dunn with their "Steers and Stripes." Wald disses Emilio Estefan and Sony as a "mafia," as if Los Tigres' label FonoVisa had never been a monopoly or wasn't backed by Mexico's huge media conglomerate Televisa. Going easy on the company that's putting out your book's companion CD might seem savvy, but it's really a disservice to the readers.

He also engages in the most callous revisionism of the 1992 L.A. riots I've ever read, claiming it was the "rich folks' city" that burned, and labeling the largely minority- and ironically immigrant-owned shops that got trashed as "wealthy businesses." Not even Michael Moore was that naïve, imploring the looters: "But this time, for the love of God, don't burn your own neighborhoods!" Oh, and Wald fails to mention that people--a lot of people--got killed.

Still, this book deserves two stars because Wald did interesting legwork, hitchhiking all over Mexico and seeking out leads. Also priceless is the way everyone in Culiacan has a different theory on why Chalino Sanchez was slain. However if you like real reporting and lucid analysis, you'd do better to check out Sam Quiñones' "True Tales From Another Mexico."