2018

¡Indies a Go Go! (starring Corazón Serrano, Soñadores, y Marco Flores)

corazon serrano

Loyal readers know that NorteñoBlog is in the tank for unapologetic Zacatecan vaquero and spurting tank of Terpsichore Marco Flores y La Jerez — aka Marco A. Flores y su Banda Jerez. Flores seems cheerfully indifferent to the U.S., partly because if he moved here he’d have to buy a car, and he prefers to travel by horse. He records an updated version of the centuries-old banda style tamborazo zacatecano, which is faster than its Sinaloan counterpart and, if possible, even less pretentious. Flores’s songs are full of smutty jokes and traditional dances, and though they rarely aim to cross over into banda pop, he seems to record a video for each of them, maintaining an intimate knowledge of his YouTube counts. Flores’s aesthetic appeal boils down to this: He is a prolific hoot.

His latest album is Zapateado Endemoniado, released on his own MF label. It contains only three fewer songs than the latest Migos album, but — since nearly every song clocks in between 2:22 and 3:31 — it’s 45 minutes shorter. True, that’s still an hour-long brass band assault with no standouts as genius as “Stir Fry,” but Flores wisely livens up his tempos and rhythms throughout. And song for song, La Jerez’s beats are even stickier than team Migos’.

Take “Colas,” at 4:07 the longest song on Zapateado; it may or may not be an answer record to Migos’ “All Ass.” “Colas” is a big dumb cumbia punctuated by four bar solos that bounce from section to section, with unpredictable low brass lines hellbent on tripping up your dance moves. Starting at 3:40, there’s a groovy duet for clarinet and tuba that deserves to be sampled far and wide. Pick to Click!

But really, the Blog could Pick just about any song here. (In fact, I’ve already endorsed the title track, the best dressage video of our young year.) “El Torito” is a rollercoaster ride through a traditional jarabe, a 6/8 dance that flits between duple and triple feels. On “De Está Sierra a La Otra Sierra,” Flores covers a wistful immigration classic like he was just elected mayor of San José. “Mi Niña Bonita” is not a cover of Vicente Fernandez or Marco Antonio Solis; it’s even bouncier and prettier. And if you watch any of the videos for these songs, you’ll see the flailing limbs of a man more comfortable in his own skin than most of us have dreamt of being. He’s pretty pleased with the sound of his crowing voice, too. ¡VALE LA PENA!

If norteño is more your thing, the fresh-faced septet Soñadores de Sinaloa have just released their I-dunno-sixth? album Lo Improvisado (Mayra/Three Sound). Continue reading “¡Indies a Go Go! (starring Corazón Serrano, Soñadores, y Marco Flores)” →

March 9, 2018 1

Who’s On the Mexican Radio? (starring Alicia Villarreal, Christian Nodal, Joss Favela, y más)

jose villarreal

As promised, Edwin Luna and his perpetually nascent acting chops appear at #10 on this week’s busy Mexican radio chart with the giggle inducing “Fíjate Que Sí.” Actually, it might only induce giggles if you watch the video, let’s see here… [Listens to the song in another tab.] JAJAJAJA! Oh, Edwin Luna. You are an international camp treasure. The man draws out his singing and even his spoken interludes until the words congeal into a sticky mass. They say he aspirates agave nectar.

Other entries previously lauded by NorteñoBlog include man-myth-legend El Fantasma at #17, and whirling fount of Terpsichore Marco Flores doing his devil dance at #19. At #14 we find the latest mariacheño-or-whatever romantic ballad from Christian Nodal, still sounding older than his teenaged years. In “Me Dejé Llevar,” the title track of his overrated 2017 debut album, Nodal laments getting carried away by passion for a mujer, which seems to have made him possessive and scummy. The music doesn’t sound like possessive scumminess; it’s his patented mix of dull, syncopation-free guitars with swoony horns, strings, and accordion. The video, though, is a primo cultural artifact. First we see the macho caballero with hat, cigar, and sturdy country mansion; then we’re whisked behind the scenes into some abstract phantasmagoria of amor, where the now hatless Nodal and a nearly naked mujer enact the ritualized dance steps of love inside a neon square, floating amid darkness. THE DARKNESS OF THE CABELLERO’S OWN HEART, you suggest? The Blog won’t argue with you, except to say: NO VALE LA PENA.

Better is the song at #11. “Sentimientos” is a likeable minor key cumbia from Alicia Villarreal’s 2017 album; it’s both a cover of Villarreal’s 20-year-old Grupo Limite hit, and a duet with her fellow mexicana María José. In both their studio rendition and in this live video, Villarreal and José work up a mariacheño head of steam like Nodal never dreamed. There’s just as much string/accordion swooning, but a much kickier beat and the knowing winks that appear when you find yourself in your 40s, mooning “Ahhhh…. FEELINGS.” Pick to Click!

If these newfangled stylistic blends aren’t your thing and you long for some straight-down-the-middle chapado-a-la-antigua norteño, look no further than #20
Continue reading “Who’s On the Mexican Radio? (starring Alicia Villarreal, Christian Nodal, Joss Favela, y más)” →

February 22, 2018 4

En Vivo Chicago: Ulices Chaidez, Regulo Caro, Lenin Ramirez

caro and band

Norteño music is sufficient unto itself.

As a gringo who loves talking about this music, I often find myself comparing norteño to other U.S. genres — especially our chart pop, with which it shares predilections for dancing, drinking, and lovey dovey ballads. Other writers have pointed out the music’s similarites to country (hats, horses, drinking, instrumentation) or rap (attitude, marginalized artists, drinking, trapping-as-metaphor), but all such comparisons ultimately fall short, because norteño doesn’t need ’em. At Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom last Saturday, this self-sufficiency once again became clear. A packed house of four or five thousand people sang along with entire songs by Ulices Chaidez y Sus Plebes, Regulo Caro, Lenin Ramirez, and (I assume) the headliner Gerardo Ortiz, each of whom presented a unique modern take on an unapologetically Mexican tradition.

(About that last parenthetical… before we get too far I should admit that I left before Ortiz took the stage. Reader, you have to understand some things. It was after midnight, I work early Sunday mornings, I live more than an hour outside the city, the snow had started falling, and I am 40. Also know that you cannot shame me more than I have shamed myself.)

The crowd, ninety percent of whom were younger than me and had better hair, screamed when each act shouted out their families’ states of origin: “¡Arriba Jalisco! ¡Arriba Zacatecas!” Fans pulled out their cell phones to record the hits, devoting gigabytes of cloud storage to Chaidez’s “Te Regalo” and Caro’s “En Estos Dias.” I was grateful not to be the worst dressed person there. With my black Nikes (the nicest article of clothing I own, now salt stained and sticky), leather jacket, paisley shirt, and dark jeans, I was somewhere in the middle of the pack: well below the stylish vaqueros and vaqueras in their spotless hats and glistening belts, but not super conspicuous.

chaidez cellphones

Billed as a “Baile de Valentine’s Day,” the bands and between-set DJs leaned heavily on dance tunes and love songs, but maybe they always do. The Aragon has limited VIP seating — the VIPs stood impassively above the rest of us, resembling the stony-faced onlookers at the Eyes Wide Shut orgy — so most of the crowd simply stood and danced on the main floor. The place filled up during an opening set by a tight accordion quintet whose name neither I nor my neighbors caught. When they finished playing and I turned around, thousands of people had materialized to fill the hall, and it was clear that any attempt to exit would require detailed planning. As the crowd packed in tighter and tighter, brief shoving matches became more frequent and the elbows of oblivious dancing couples became more annoying. (I was also grateful not to be the only dorky dude fixed to one spot, bobbing his head.) Like a shark through the sea of people strode an intrepid five-foot-tall vendedora, holding bouquets of light-up roses above her head. I didn’t see anyone buy them, but she kept trying.

chaidez and burgos

Ulices Chaidez didn’t help her cause by tossing real roses from the stage. The Blog has been in the tank for Chaidez since his first single, and while I was disappointed with the high ballad quotient of his 2017 album El Elegido (on DEL Records — maybe with the exception of the opening grupo, all these guys are on DEL), in concert he was spectacular.
Continue reading “En Vivo Chicago: Ulices Chaidez, Regulo Caro, Lenin Ramirez” →

February 16, 2018 1

Desfile de Hombres… AGAIN (starring Becky G, Aida Cuevas, Siggno, y más)

siggno (1)

The Billboard charts are boring this week, so please excuse the following disjointed rant…

As NorteñoBlog suggested last post, the Grammys’ approach to Mexican music is fairly ridiculous. The Grammys themselves are ridiculous — although if we forget that they’re supposed to be rewarding the best music, and instead see them as the dying public gasps of an increasingly irrelevant trade organization, with Neil Portnow facing down exciting existential dilemmas around every corner like Sarah journeying through the Labyrinth… well, I dunno if that helps.

AND YET. For many musicians, especially the ones who don’t make much money, the Grammys are not ridiculous. Or maybe not merely ridiculous, but also useful. Take ranchera lifer Aida Cuevas, who won the Best Regional Mexican Music Album (Including Tejano), against a field of men, for her independently released Arrieros Somos – Sesiones Acústicas. Cuevas used her untelevised Grammy moment to flaunt her charro outfit and to urge Mexican women to speak out against sexual harassment. I won’t pretend to enjoy this particular album of hers, but if we accept that both the Grammy awards and the Blog have slightly less aesthetic authority than one of those plastic duck bobbing contests at a carnival, my opinion doesn’t matter. Cuevas is a talented singer who releases her own music and received a podium. She made the most of her moment. The Mexican music world needs to let in more people like her.

So do the airwaves. If you study last week’s Regional Mexican airplay list, below, you’ll see Chiquis Rivera has dropped off, to be replaced by another token woman: Becky G, whose decidedly non-regional ode to older men, “Mayores,” somehow became the 40th most-played song on regional stations. (This week — not shown due to Blog laziness — she moves up to #22.)

Look, I know studying musicians’ chart positions is a ridiculous exercise. The charts rarely have anything to do with aesthetic quality, and observing the cultural hegemony of “Despacito” is only interesting for a day or so. But the charts do reflect who’s getting paid, and a complete absence of women tells you something unflattering about the values of the industry’s gatekeepers. What will it take to get actual norteño singers like Victoria “La Mala” or Laura Denisse onto the radio — or to get Diana Reyes or Los Horoscopos or Alicia Villarreal back on the radio?

While the Blog organizes a call-in campaign, let’s look at whose new songs are getting played. Radio station billboard anchor Gerardo Ortiz and whirling fount of Terpsichore Marco Flores have brought their VALE LA PENA Mexican hits to El Norte. Los Cardenales de Nuevo León and Los Huracanes del Norte head up the geriatric “beloved by Becky G” contingent with some straight-down-the-middle accordion lopes.

Best of all: Somehow the Blog hasn’t yet noted “Que Me Amas,” a sweet love song from noted eyeliner-and-metal-t-shirt models Siggno. The song starts with “We Will Rock You”-style stadium stomping and distorted guitar, before switching to a midtempo accordion groove that splits the difference between backbeat and polka. You’ve heard Intocable pull this same trick, but Siggno does it better, becuase they keep switching back and forth. The accordion solo and closing drum fusillade are also jarringly good, enough to kick Siggno into coveted Pick to Click status:

And finally, the Blog would be remiss to not point out DJ Kass and his pesky viral hit “Scooby-Doo Pa! Pa!”, according to the Daily Mail the new “Harlem Shake” our nation deserves.
Continue reading “Desfile de Hombres… AGAIN (starring Becky G, Aida Cuevas, Siggno, y más)” →

February 7, 2018 0

El Komander y Los Twiins: Hombres de Negocios

adolfo valenzuela

If you haven’t used up your monthly allotment of free articles over at Bloomberg Businessweek, NorteñoBlog encourages you to check out journalist David Peisner’s profile of El Komander, the Blog’s 2016 Artist of the Year, and Los Twiins, arguably the most influential producers in the genre and noted purveyors of Candy Everybody Wants. Warning: It has the clickbaity gringo-scandalizing headline “This Guy Made a Fortune Off Mexican Drug Ballads. Now He’s Selling Love Songs.” Second warning: That headline pretty much sums up the article. But within that framing, you get highlights like:

— Adolfo Valenzuela, one of Los Twiins, reminiscing about some of his adolescent banda gigs. “‘We used to play for Chalino,’ Adolfo says. ‘I remember him being always surrounded by mafia people. He’d hire us to play and be sitting the whole time, just drinking. Then he’d sing one song and go into the restroom to do cocaine or something.'”

— The “Star is Born” account of Komander’s audition for the Twiins. “‘My cousin was calling me saying, “I have somebody that works for me that comes from Sinaloa, that has no papers, and says he wants to do music,” ’ Omar [Valenzuela] recalls. ‘I told him, “Please don’t bother me. I’m busy.” ’ Eventually he relented and invited Ríos in to sing for him and his brother. ‘We were blown away,’ Omar says. ‘He’s not that much of a singer, but he was real. He writes whatever he feels about whatever was going on in Culiacán. Mexico at that time was really dangerous, as it is now, but you never heard people [singing] before about decapitating.'”

— This article also supports the contention, which I first heard from Sam Quinones when researching Ariel Camacho, that “movimiento alterado” has moved from being a proper, Twiins-associated brand into a more generic realm. “Alterado” corridos aren’t just the bloody decapitations found in songs like “Sanguinarios del M1.” They’re also the narrative-free corrido style we live these days — celebrations of wealth and glamor, often praising or impersonating real life cartel bosses by name. In this sense, Gerardo Ortiz‘s “Dámaso” could be a defining song of alterado movimiento, even though Ortiz recorded it after severing formal ties with Los Twiins.

— Quinones and the Valenzuelas disagree as to whether this is a good thing. Quinones told me the alterado style is “a corruption of the corrido’s original intent,” which is to celebrate underdogs. But in the Bloomberg article, Adolfo says that’s the point. “’It’s not like before, when they were like, “I’m going to work hard like my parents,”’ Adolfo says. ‘This new generation has learned they can make more money, have luxuries, be bigger or better than their parents. They all love that feeling of power, which had never been felt before in Mexican music. Because before it was love and sadness. It was never about power.'”

Peisner sums things up with an excellent point: “It’s possible to see the alterado movement as a defiant howl from fans who’ve frequently felt marginalized, threatened, and even emasculated by the immigration debate on the U.S. side of the border and by the raging war on the other side.” So read the whole thing. If you faithfully follow Mexican music, you’ve probably read some of it in articles elsewhere: the capsule summary of Chalino’s career; Adolfo Valenzuela justifying his work by saying he’s just giving the people what they want; the comparisons to “gangsta rap”; the real life violence that’s killed musicians and their associates; the Mexican government haplessly demonizing narcocorridos. Peisner wrote the first ever regional Mexican article for this general interest publication, so he pretty much had to cover those bases, even though they hog the spotlight in story after story.

The Blog tends to side with Komander himself, who complains late in the article, “The term ‘narcocorrido’ bothers me. El Komander sings about horses, about cockfights.” But I still learned plenty, and besides all their musical virtues and ethical conundrums, the Valenzuela Twiins are among the most quotable interview subjects around.

VALE LA PENA

January 25, 2018 0

Who’s On the Mexican Radio? (starring Alfredo Olivas, Los Inquietos, y más)

zapateado endemoniado

Continuing the sad theme of Albums NorteñoBlog Slept On In 2017, we turn to the fifth-or-so release from prodigious 23-year-old singer-songwriter-accordionist Alfredo Olivas, La Rueda de Fortuna (Sahuaro/Sony Latin). The Blog first encountered Olivas in the pre-Blog morass of 2013, when he appeared as a teenager on Hyphy Records’ cheapo compilation Hyphy Music Inc. Presenta El Corrido VIP 1era Edición. Comparing him and his cohort to punk rockers, and misspelling his name, I wrote, “Olvidas creates thin slashes of song, sometimes with one instrument insistently out of tune, tuba and accordion prancing around one another like bird of paradise evading some jungle cat, if that ever happens.” (I think I’d been watching a bunch of Planet Earth.)

Since then, Olivas has been sounding like more of a pro. He’s written a ton of songs — according to Wiki, over 1,000 during his life — and has lately turned away from the narcocorridos of his youth into more reflective and romantic work. Which isn’t to say he’s stodgy. “El Paciente” was one of 2017’s best singles, a soaring deathbed meditation whose energetic horn charts were set to “burble.” For his accordion songs, his band tackles different rhythms like Intocable, moving beyond the typical polkas and waltzes into grooves that approach rock. And his lyrics tend to be more interesting than typical for this genre, where song themes tend to stick to “I’m so in love with you,” “You unfaithful whore,” or “I’m such a big shot.”

See, for instance, the song sitting at #13 in Mexico. (Blog note: it’s since climbed to #4, but I’m too lazy to change the chart below.) In “Antecedentes de Culpa,” a guy has a drunken argument with his mujer, wakes up hung over, and regrets the whole thing. I’m not even sure what they’re arguing about, but it hardly matters; the argument dredges up a host of insults that sting worse than the subject of disagreement. It’s a precise, subtle portrait of how two lovers can choose exactly the right words to wound one another. (Standard translation caveats apply.) The music, naturally, is all swinging and sunshine, the band ruefully shaking their heads while their leader tries to talk his way out of his regret. Special props to Olivas’s drummer for leavening his beat with some cool snare rolls and subdivided cymbal work, and to the bassist for playing hooks. Pick to Click!

Also notable:
Continue reading “Who’s On the Mexican Radio? (starring Alfredo Olivas, Los Inquietos, y más)” →

January 18, 2018 4

Las Ironías de la Vida: Grupo Codiciado

grupo codiciado

BREAKING: Binational quintet Grupo Codiciado has changed its look. The fearsome fivesome sped onto the Billboard charts last year with “Gente de Accionar,” for NorteñoBlog’s dinero the most exciting debut hit in a year that also gave us “Mi 45” and “Adios Amor.” Propelled by rippling drums and spurts of accordion, “Gente” might also be the most exciting song with its overused four-chord progression since Urge Overkill’s “Sister Havana.” Here’s the Grupo playing the song back in 2015, when it was apparently so new Alilet Aragon had to read the lyrics off his phone:

Note the flashy matching suits, standard issue for corrido combos young and old. But now it’s 2018, and for their forthcoming album, No Lo Intenten en Casa, Codiciado seem to have blown their advance at Urban Outfitters:

no lo intenten

Not appearing on that tracklisting is Codiciado’s latest single, “Todo Nos Pasa Por Algo,” a song about getting, like, so high with los muchachos. “Todo Nos Pasa” is better than “Fire Up,” the latest hit ode to self-medication by T3R Elemento, because it’s faster and funnier. “Todo el tiempo la pasaba platicando que ironías de la vida,” sings Aragon — “We spent the whole time talking about the ironies of life.” Sounds about right. Pick to Click!

We’ve seen moves like these — flashy matching suits transformed into black urbanwear, tales of drug production into drug consumption — before. A decade ago California bands like Los Amos de Nuevo Leon went self-consciously hyphy, turning from their trad (if grisly) narcocorridos to faster, grosser party corridos. The Blog covered that whole movement in the article “Pronounced “Jai-Fi”: The Rise and Fall of Hyphy Norteño.” The members of Grupo Codiciado, in their late teens and early 20s, don’t identify as “hyphy,” and their new music hasn’t appreciably changed in style, but the visual impulse is the same.

Some enterprising hesher has uploaded the album in full before its official release. Notable songs include what I think is another single, “Miro Lo Que Otros No Miran,” a proud song about how the boys have worked hard for everything they’ve got; and “Yo Solo Me Entiendo,” one of the better corrido odes to DEL Records proprietor Angel Del Villar.

Could this mean indie rockers Grupo Codiciado are angling for major distribution on Del Villar’s roster? If he signs them, will he make them “expand from hardcore corridos and into radio-friendly romantic fare,” as Talento Uno CEO Gustavo Lopez promises to do with the similarly rockin’ Fuerza de Tijuana? Rewarding a talented band by destroying what people love about them? ¡Que irónico!

January 11, 2018 2

fire up video

When NorteñoBlog last noticed the West Coast sierreño quartet/quintet T3R Elemento at summer’s end, the shrift was short. Teenage lead singer Kristopher Nava “pushes his way through [debut hit single ‘Rafa Caro’] like the frantic-to-impress kid he likely is,” I wrote. Four months later, “Rafa Caro” is still hanging around both the Hot Latin chart and the radio airplay chart, and now these guys have another single on just the big chart — i.e., streaming and sales, but not much airplay yet. “Fire Up” is the new least favorite song of genteel antebellum marionette Jeff Sessions, offering as it does a Dr. Seuss-like panoply of suggestions for ingesting THC. Would you, could you, with a bong? Would you, could you, en el avión? Would you, could you, con la skunk? Saca un blunt and fire up!

“Fire Up” is a decent enough minor-key sierreño waltz — good harmonies during the chorus! — that it convinced me to check out the band’s 2017 debut studio album Underground (LA R/Parral). With some relief, I can announce I wasn’t sleeping on much. T3R Elemento are more interesting than good. Bilingual and multinational, they’ve got two members (requinto player Jose Felipe Prieto and acordionista Zeus Gamez) hailing from Mexico, while bassist Sergio Cardenas comes from Cuba and 17-year-old frontman Kristopher Nava is from Vegas. Produced by prolific Californian Fernando Cavazos, the album’s a mix of semi-energetic narcocorridos, for which Nava musters an overeager McLovin’ vibe, and drooly romantic ballads, which studiously avoid mustering any vibe at all. Notably, the ’50s sock hop ballad “Nos Pertenecemos (We Belong Together)” appears in both Spanglish and English versions, and fails to leave an impression either time. It’s entirely possible the whole thing sounds better if you follow Nava’s advice and get high off a doctored Swisher Sweet; I’ll let you know after I finish my Mario Kart/Unlikely Animal Friends marathon. NO VALE LA PENA