My Favorite Mexican Music
In my 6 years living in Mexico, my musical tastes have certainly become…well, odd.
I really enjoy listening to northern Mexican corridos and a style called banda which is best sung in the northern state called Sinaloa.
Down below, I’ve put up some You Tube music videos as examples of each musical style.
El Chapo de Sinaloa – Pura Banda
Go to You Tube for the Video
Wikipedia describes Mexican banda as:
Banda is a brass-based form of traditional Mexican music.
Bandas play a wide variety of songs, including rancheras, corridos, cumbias, and boleros. Bandas are more widely known for their rancheras, but they also play modern pop songs and cumbias.
Established in the last late 1930s in Sinaloa, a state in northern Mexico, banda music exploded in popularity in the late 1990s throughout Mexico. Its roots come from the overlapping of Mexican music with German polka music. At the time, many German-Americans lived in southern Texas. This greatly influenced northern Mexican music. Immigrants from northern Mexico brought the music to the United States. Initially popular in the southwest United States, primarily in Texas, California and Arizona, banda has followed the movement of Mexican immigrants into the Midwest United States and the rest of the country.
Banda has also been widely popular in Zacatecas. Probably the most famous banda from Zacatecas is La Banda Jerez.
Los Tigres del Norte – masters of el corrido
Go to You Tube for this Video
Wikipedia describes corridos as:
The corrido is a popular narrative song and poetry form of the mestizo Mexican cultural area (which includes the Southern states of the United States, taken from Mexican sovereignship in the mid to late 19th. Century). Derived along the 18th. century from Spanish “romance”, among other popular forms brought from Europe, in its most known form consists of 1) a salutation from the singer and prologue to the story; 2) the story itself; 3) a moral and a farewell from the singer.
Various themes are featured in Mexican corridos, and corridos lyrics are often old legends and ballads about a famed criminal or hero in the frontiers of northern Mexico (analogous to the western U.S.). Some corridos may also be love stories. Contemporary corridos written within the past few decades feature much more modern themes.
Tags: General Mexico Info, Guy's Corner, music
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