Narcocorridos

Latin pop sells in vast quantities, but it's outshone at the tills by something far more obscure - Mexican corridos, a type of broadside ballad with a polka beat. Since the vast majority of the corrido tapes and CDs are never SoundScanned, however, you don't find it on any charts. And the most popular form of corrido? Narcocorridos, tales of drug trafficking. Writer Elijah Wald has examined the genre in his new book, Narcocorridos, along with an accompanying CD on Fonvisa.

"The average corrido buyer in the American southwest is buying narcocorridos and gangsta rap."

What prompted you to write the book?

The idea there was a folk style with this power got me excited, and Los Tigres del Norte did Jefe A Jefe that I thought was a masterpiece. I wrote a piece for the Boston Globe and became more fascinated. I spent about eight months researching in Mexico, and a little more time in the Southwestern United States, then took about a year to write it. While narcocorridos are the most popular, there are other styles of corrido. The vast majority of the corridos written in the last 20 years are about the drug traffic, and about two-thirds of the book is about that. The rest is about socially conscious corridos, often at a local level. The big money is around a limited number of themes about drugs. The analogy between this stuff and rap - which sounds odd since this is accordion-based polka - isn't far-fetched, to the point where the L.A. corridos guys are just now including one or two rap cuts in English on their corrido releases. The average corrido buyer in the American southwest is buying narcocorridos and gangsta rap.

So where might the corrido go in the future?

There isn't one answer. In L.A. it could be a bilingual corrido-rap fusion. The street corrido guys have virtually no interest in rock en español . But then there are the musicians who play on buses in Acapulco. That stuff's not about drugs, and it's hardly changed in 100 years, and it probably won't change much soon.

Narcocorridos

"The average corrido buyer in the American southwest is buying narcocorridos and gangsta rap."

What prompted you to write the book?

So where might the corrido go in the future?

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