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Shot Through El Corazón: Sinaloa Muscles In On Latin Pop

I wrote this a couple years ago for Maura Magazine; I reprint it here with their kind permission.

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“He’s really good,” said my librarian Fatima, handing me the new Noel Torres CD. She’d seen him live in Chicago a few months back. I’d never heard of the guy — when it comes to library CDs, I have no standards and few expectations. La Estructura, featuring Torres’s perfectly trimmed hair and penetrating scowl, immediately moved to the top of my stack.

Noel_Torres_-_La_Estructura

Fatima knew what she was talking about. When you hear La Estructura, the most appropriate response is awe, followed by abject humility and despair because you will never create anything as good or alive or technically accomplished, as upending of your expectations. “I can’t even fathom what his band is doing,” went my first attempt at an explanation. Torres is a young man from the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa. He sings, plays the accordion, writes most of his songs, and leads a four-piece norteño band as well as an occasional brass band. His unadorned singing gets the job done; at all other tasks he is a motherfucker. Tossing off blazing accordion riffs with the “top this!” spirit of ‘80s hair metal, he leads his band through variations on polkas and waltzes. But while much Sinaloan norteño music simply bounces along, arid and sparse, the Torres band fills every instant with rambunctious noise. Tuba and bajo quinto fall all over each other, the drummer bashes like he’s playing on a John Zorn record, and somehow all this craziness congeals into steady pulses and familiar forms. My second attempt at explanation was one word: “brutal.”
Continue reading “Shot Through El Corazón: Sinaloa Muscles In On Latin Pop” →

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Explosion Norteña: Beto’s Revenge

beto

One of my top five norteño acts, Explosion Norteña was an infamous band known for their brash, boastful, but most of all based-on-a-true-story corridos about the gritty, unforgivable world of the Tijuana Cartel. Since the band’s formation back in 1995, they have had one of the most entertaining musical careers since Chalino Sánchez.

Word on the street was that in the beginning, members of the Tijuana Cartel sponsored the band, allowing them to buy better equipment and purchase studio time to record their first album. I would argue that the current crop of brash and violent lyrics, so popular in today’s narcocorridos, was heavily influenced by Explosion Norteña’s style.

Their lyrics were combative and named specific individuals, and they made no secret of their allegiance to the Tijuana Cartel. The civil war between former cartel lieutenant El Teo and Luis Fernando Arellano, head of the cartel, erupted in 2008, during which the band stayed loyal to CAF (Cartel Arellano Felix) leadership. Eventually someone decided they didn’t care much for Explosion’s corridos, or possibly they had some personal issues, and as with a lot of things in Mexico, they decided the best way to handle it was to murder lead singer Beto Cervantes.
Continue reading “Explosion Norteña: Beto’s Revenge” →

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Top 5 W.T.F. Corrido Moments!

gucci el chapo

5) Omar Ruiz performs “El Americano” for George Jung

For an American to get his own narcocorrido is rare in itself. For George Jung, the infamous drug trafficker, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine him being worthy of one — after all, the man already had a movie made based on his life. He’s an individual that I’m sure has lived through some surreal moments. So I can only imagine what was going through his head when he ran into the young up-and-coming artist Omar Ruiz. (Although by the looks of it, it was most likely a planned meeting.)

The video shows an attentive if somewhat confused Jung trying to understand the corrido being sung to him about his own life… in Spanish, of course. At one point he lights a cigarette. Perhaps he was getting bored but I’d like to think he was just taking it all in. By the end of the song, it becomes apparent that Jung did indeed appreciate the song, describing it as beautiful.

Continue reading “Top 5 W.T.F. Corrido Moments!” →

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Gerardo Ortiz en La Jukebox

gerardo-ortiz-1000x600

En otros ocasiones cuando The Singles Jukebox ha escrito sobre Gerardo Ortiz, ha escrito cosas felices, pero ahora… ¿tal vez estábamos cansados? Rebecca Gowns dice Gerardo está cansado — o mejor, “El Cholo” está “sloppy,” “loping and dragging.” Es justa. Multiples criticas escribieron sobre el shoutout a El Chapo, pero él es solo un parte del paisaje aquí.

Escribí:

Accordionist Marito Aguilar is a badass of Randy Rhoads proportions, in that I imagine certain young shredheads — albeit with diametrically opposing hairstyles — buying the CDs of Gerardo Ortiz or Ozzy Osbourne just so they can retire to their bedrooms and dissect the flurries of fingers. Aguilar is the best reason to hear Ortiz’s latest album; given free reign by the star, the studio pro came back with some jaw-dropping chromatic French cafe shit. The drum sound, boomy but articulate, makes me wonder whether someone found a way to mic Luis Navarro’s sticks. Otherwise, Ortiz’s living-the-good-life corrido is… good enough. It’ll be an eternal singalong anthem for Sinaloa partisans, same way I still get a kick from hearing Nelly shout out Plaza Frontenac.

VALE LA PENA

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Get Off My Lawn With That Accordion!

los ramones

You know how it is — you feel like throwing on some real street, gritty corridos and you’re bobbing your head as the first couple accordion notes start to sound off. Then you hear what appears to be a 6-year-old kid singing about the hit squad he belongs to and how prepared he is to battle his enemies.

I like a great narcocorrido as much as the next guy, but whenever I hear a little kid crooning about bazookas and assault rifles, it rubs me the wrong way, I don’t respond to it with approval, instead all I can think of is “Where are your parents?!”

Well, it turns out, more than likely, his parents are right beside their little protégé belting out the latest corrido. Now . . I don’t want to sound like a hater, But! I just can’t vibe to the song if the singer sounds like El Chavo del Ocho.

Songs like “El Mal Ejemplo” by Calibre 50 only have the young kid singing for a couple seconds, but it just doesn’t sound right. To Calibre 50’s credit, the song is about a father realizing he is setting a bad example for his son and decides to teach him the right way in life. But still, I’ll pass.

Another example is “En Preparacion,” sung by Nachito Hernandez, the son of veteran corridista Nacho Hernandez. The thought of a kid singing about waging war against a rival cartel is too much to believe. I’m sure it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously but when you have a kid singing this type of song it feels like a gimmick and filler for the album.

It doesn’t mean Kid singers can’t do the job right. Take for example Los Ramones de Nuevo Leon, a four-piece band of young singers, who came out two years ago with a rendition of “Flor Hermosa,” one of the best versions I have heard in a while. Their singing style and use of instruments is superb and their voices just keep getting better and better each year. Basically, when you listen to them, you feel the same way after eating some of your mom’s lasagna on a bitterly cold night… satisfied!

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Recodo en La Jukebox

Let's have a party; proceed to party.
Let’s have a party; proceed to party.

¡Ya era hora! Banda El Recodo, los papás corteses de Sinaloa, suenan más emocionados en su nuevo sencillo “Mi Vicio Más Grande.” A The Singles Jukebox, Rebecca A. Gowns escuchó “the ‘My Way’ of 21st Century banda.” Yo escribí:

The Sinaloan institution Banda El Recodo is closing in on 80 years old, and they haven’t stayed at the forefront of their genre all those years by happy accident. Bandleader Alfonso Lizárraga has tailored Recodo’s recent singles with sartorial precision, filling gaps in the regional Mexican playlist. In 2009 he adapted “Dime Que Me Quieres” from a ballad into a cumbia because there were no romantic cumbias on the radio. Four years later Recodo went the opposite direction, plugging “Vas a Llorar Por Mi” into the spot earmarked for “melodramatic stop-start ballads about death.” (You didn’t know you wanted that, did you? RECODO DID.) Now the team returns with their liveliest song in years, a furious minor-key chops killer about living the good life. The theme is nothing new, but the furious minor-keyness picks up where spinoff band Recoditos left off two years ago with “Mi Último Deseo.” Recodo races through that two-minute slot with thicker brass and, in Geovanni Mondragón, a less personable singer, though I do admire his trembling vibrato in the chorus, seconds before his bandmates wallop him with a giant hemiola.
[7]

VALE LA PENA

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Dance Komanders

saumet

Bomba-Estereo-AmanecerOver the weekend NorteñoBlog met up with the redoubtable Bilbo’s Laptop to see Bomba Estéreo play Chicago’s Concord Music Hall. The Colombian electro-boogie band only wanders within NorteñoBlog’s purlieu insofar as the genre tag “Latin music” says anything coherent, but we’ve enjoyed them here before, and new album Amanecer (Sony) is VALE LA PENA. Carefully honing a tight set from four(!) albums worth of material, the Bombas gave us seven or eight massive jams, most of them new, and little changed from their recorded templates besides some extended intros and party-hearty crescendos at the ends. Where improvisation appeared, it was rhythmic. Bomba Estéreo prizes rhythm over all. Drummer Kike Egurrola played rock-solid beds of beats — dembow, cumbia, others I can’t name — providing a foil for the contrapuntal jabs of guitarist Julián Salazar and bassist Simón Mejía; during songs like “Somos Dos,” they were the grooviest little indie rock band on the planet. Salazar and Mejía spent roughly half their time at their electronic sound banks, keeping the details of their recordings while thickening the sound. “Soy Yo” was already the most ridonkulous song on the new album. Live, with its Colombian flute and sampled voice mixing with deep, body-shaking bass and frontwoman Liliana Saumet’s explosive gestures, it sounded like banger of the year.

Saumet’s job, at which she excels, is to cut through the bass and mobilize the crowd. She sets a good example: her unfussy dancing gave us a nice repertoire of rippling body movements, perfect for a crowded floor of hipsters holding cups of beer. That said, the main mobilizer was Saumet’s voice. Her high whine can come off as strangled on romantic melodies — even “Somos Dos,” which Saumet humbly introduced as “beautiful,” went a little long — but usually it’s a fourth rhythm instrument, punching and goading along with the others. This is true of her raps, of course, but Saumet also builds her melodies for rhythmic impact. Hearing her voice and its syncopations emerge from the electro-throb, the mass of bodies understands its implicit commands: Dance. Love. Clap. And Saumet’s most crucial, Dr. Seussian directive: Shout loud at the top of your voice! SOY YO!

Alfredo-Rios-El-Komander-Detras-Del-Miedo1-450x450On the drive down I listened again to El Komander’s latest album, Detrás Del Miedo (Twiins). It’s as effortlessly charming as you could hope, but of course that lack of effort is an effect — YOU try lassoing a four-or-five-piece band into the stop-start precision of the title song. Komander’s released about half these songs as singles already, and I’ve been skeptical of his ballads, but even they sound better in the middle of his faster tunes. The guy can write melodies! His singing has improved, too; as Komander grows into his timing, he convinces us that “El Papel Cambio” emerges straight from his mind. Él es él. Plus, any album containing both “Malditas Ganas” and “Fuga Pa’ Maza” would have to work pretty hard to avoid a big VALE LA PENA.

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La Buena, La Mala, y Las Feas

Joan-Sebastian

NorteñoBlog went on vacation at the worst possible time, because while I was gone, IT ALL WENT DOWN. Not with the music. Except for El Komander (¡VALE LA PENA!), very few notable albums came out in the past few weeks; we’ll catch up with albums and singles in the coming days. No, I’m talking about las personas en las noticias:

LA BUENA:

Joan Sebastian’s discography is a mile long. The singer, songwriter, and guitarist not only wrote over a thousand songs, from ranchera to synthpop, but he wrote and produced entire albums for other singers. This is how NorteñoBlog has encountered him in the past: as the man behind Vicente Fernandez’s irresistible “Estos Celos” and Graciela Beltrán’s “Robame Un Beso.” Sebastian was famously “el poeta del pueblo,” riding his horse on stage and representing for his gente, and that meant giving the people what they wanted, mixing up regional styles with pop sounds from El Norte and acting in the novela Tú y Yo. And then there’s this delightful factoid about the man born José Manuel Figueroa:

Mr. Sebastian’s Facebook page says that he changed his name to Juan Sebastian in 1977, and that he turned the “u” in “Juan” into an “o” on the advice of his sister, a numerologist.

Maybe a commenter can explain how that math works?

I’m still catching up with him, and probably will be for a long time. RIP

Also while we were gone, Banda El Recodo became the first banda to play on Spanish TV. If I’m surprised they hadn’t done so already, does that reveal my cultural chauvinism? This is just more evidence that the term “Latin music” makes absolutely no sense as a genre, because it tells us nothing useful about the music in question, what it sounds like, or who listens to it. Surely somewhere in the world, someone is lumping together Wiley and George Jones as “English music” — but that doesn’t make the idea any less nonsense.

LA MAL:

Put on your corrido-writing pants, it’s time for an update on El Chapo!

But the music production and distribution business has changed dramatically since El Chapo’s last escape [in 2001] — meaning times have changed on the narco-corrido front, as well. Forget six months; within six hours, bands and singers had rushed songs of El Chapo’s second escape onto YouTube and FaceBook. By Sunday afternoon, bands were recording their just-written Chapo tunes in the studio, playing the songs in front of enthusiastic live audiences and releasing elaborate videos with news coverage interspersed with dramatic reenactments of the tunnel escape.

Here are Los Alegres del Barranco:

These corridos are mostly gleeful, because El Chapo is now even LARGER than larger than life, and because of the Mexican government’s uncanny resemblance to Keystone Cops.

This musical expression points bluntly to collusion and to Mexico’s failure to run a government of law and order.

As many analysts have pointed out, the escape is a major embarrassment for President Enrique Peña Nieto, who in an interview with Univision after El Chapo was captured, said that allowing another escape would be “unforgivable.”

There’s also a Frontline documentary on El Chapo, if you’re so inclined, and Cartel Land, a documentary about the autodefensas and their less defensible U.S. counterparts, the border yahoos militias. NorteñoBlog has seen neither, but I’ll report back.

EL FEO:

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Julión Álvarez y El Komander en La Jukebox

el-komander

Desafortunadamente, manejé a St. Louis cuando mis colegas a The Singles Jukebox escribieron sobre el cantante favorito de NorteñoBlog, Julión Álvarez, y su canción “El Amor De Su Vida.” Lloré lágrimas amargas. Julión Álvarez lloró lágrimas amargas también, porque ese es su trabajo.

Brad Shoup:

You know, I gotta stop weighing the vocals against the intro. The brass arrives like waves of reinforcements before a defense is even established, and that’s enough. Álvarez passes off shakiness as emotion, but he’s rescued time and again by a sympathetic rhythm section and a boisterous set of horns.

Sr. Shoup, Julión Álvarez es auténtico en su emoción y su “shakiness,” su shakiness es muy hermoso, y tú, Sr. Shoup, deberias buscar pequeñas cantidades de emoción en tu corazón… SI ES QUE EXISTEN. :):)

(“El Amor De Su Vida” = NO VALE LA PENA, btw. Sin embargo…)

Fortunadamente volví a casa para escribir sobre El Komander y “Malditas Ganas”:

Sr. Ríos isn’t quite the last man standing from El Movimiento Alterado, the over-the-top genre of horror corridos milked dry by L.A.-based Twiins Enterprises. He is, however, the only Twiins artist who can reliably command a million quick Youtube hits, so that’s what he does: he’s released a single a month in 2015, none indulging in the old ultraviolence, each its own special variety of ramshackle. Komander can’t exactly sing, as you discover when you encounter one of his ballads, an uncomfortable experience like stumbling across a jalopy wheezing to its final resting place in a junkyard. But he excels at plaintive self-referential ramshacklery like this, his January single; the whirligig swing-your-partner-into-the-walls ramshacklery of “Fuga Pa’ Maza,” his March single, is even better. This is all an illusion; his band is deceptively tight, the aural equivalent of the old wobble-the-pencil-so-it-looks-rubbery trick. All this ramshactivity has been… accumulating up to the release of July’s album, sure to contain the most virtuosic collection of mouthpiece farts the world has ever heard.

¡VALE LA PENA!

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