2019

Los Tigres y Banda El Recodo en las Noticias

los tigres folsom

A couple weeks ago, Banda El Recodo brought their act to the Twin Cities. In response, I brought my “turn Helena Simonett and a bunch of old Billboard articles into a listicle” act to the Minneapolis City Pages: 10 times Banda El Recodo, Mexico’s longest-running brass band, did something first(-ish).

The list runs down their history of firstness, from wearing uniforms in the ’40s to breaking sonwriter Luciano Luna in 2007. Along the way, they recorded swing, country, and… a version of the Lambada?

In 1989, they hired a singer to front the band.

By putting Conrado Calderón on payroll, Don Cruz made his job easier. Now the band could play their one-off vocal singles in concert without scrambling to find someone to sing them. But Cruz was also reading la borra del café: If the banda was going to reliably score hits, it needed a frontman. Calderón’s throaty voice was smooth as agave, making him perfect for this recording of “Llorando Se Fue/Lambada,” released when the Forbidden Dance was sweeping our sorry continent.

They were right to forbid it.

Meanwhile, over at Living Lutheran, I wrote about the documentary Los Tigres del Norte Live at Folsom Prison as a pretext to explain norteño music to the country’s whitest Christian denomination. Find the doc on Netflix, and then read Justino Aguila’s making-of account — playing at Folsom sounds like a logistical nightmare. From the review, enhedded The unlikely ministry of Los Tigres del Norte:

Though norteño bands play love songs and dance songs, they’re best known for corridos, story songs of regular people triumphing over the powers that be—or not. Los Tigres’ 1972 breakthrough hit, “Contrabando y Traición,” is a Bonnie-and-Clyde tale of two drug dealers that ends in tragedy. The band have kept singing complex stories of migrants: travelers from Central America, settlers whose children assimilate and grow distant, and countless others. Relying on hired songwriters, they’ve accumulated a catalog of immigrant narratives unparalleled in its thoroughness and subtlety.

One of those songs, “La Jaula de Oro,” found its way onto the Spotify playlist Strangers in a Strange Land: A Migration Soundtrack for 2019. It’s an hour of migration-related music that includes jazz, country, hardcore, new age, New Zealand Christian rap, a Tony winner, and the biggest single of the year, followed by a 40-minute chaser of John Luther Adams orchestral music. There’s a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I’m pretty sure you won’t like everything on it, but I’m even more confident you’ll find something on it you really like.

November 1, 2019 0

Julión Álvarez sidesteps his sanction, and other surprises (Desfile de Éxitos 7/12/19)

sin memoria

Several unexpected finds inside this week’s Regional Mexican top 10, not least the presence of some good banda ballads. Unfortunately, #1 isn’t one of them.

1. Banda Los Recoditos – “Perfecta” (#37 Hot Latin)
Billboard reports that this is Recoditos’ fifth #1 on the Regional Mexican chart. The first three of those — the iconic breakthrough “Ando Bien Pedo,” “Mi Ultimo Deseo,” and “Hasta Que Salga El Sol” — were about how the world is ending so we should all get drunk and shout along with Luis Angel Franco. The next two — including this one — represent the dispiriting comedown, with the personality-free Samuel Sarmiento atoning for everyone’s sins. If, as I once theorized, Franco’s songs are “the Spencer’s of the banda pop mall,” Sarmiento’s ballads are the HomeGoods. NO VALE LA PENA

2. Calibre 50 – “Simplemente Gracias” (#22 Hot Latin) NO VALE LA PENA

3. La Adictiva Banda – “El Amor de Mi Vida” (#46 Hot Latin) NO VALE LA PENA

4. Banda MS – “Por Mi No Te Detengas” (#38 Hot Latin) NO VALE LA PENA

5. Banda Carnaval – “Olvidarte, Cómo?”
A slow-as-agave ode to love’s unbreakable hold on the memory. The first line of the chorus sums it up: “Forgetting has some degree of difficulty.” That is, this banda ballad is studied and square, it pulls its punches and never cuts loose — but simmering under all that reserve is a geyser of anguish, rattling the ground around it. You hear it in certain musical gestures, like when the lugubrious on-the-beat melody jostles back and forth with the syncopated horns, and then they come into sync for a trio of “NO”s that seem exhaled rather than sung, yet pack a tremendous rhythmic wallop. Maybe I’m overselling this thing because of the video’s bargain-basement O. Henry “don’t text and drive” message. But Banda Carnaval undersells throughout, except when they strategically don’t, earning them a big old VALE LA PENA.
Continue reading “Julión Álvarez sidesteps his sanction, and other surprises (Desfile de Éxitos 7/12/19)” →

July 12, 2019 0

El Fantasma, Calibre 50, y glitter rainbow hologram Jenni Rivera (Desfile de Éxitos 7/8/19)

calibre 50

First up, from the YASSS SLAIN QUEEN file: July 2 would have been the late Jenni Rivera‘s 50th birthday, so her estate celebrated by releasing “Aparentemente Bien,” a ballad she was working on before her 2012 plane crash. Thanks to some skilled studio reconstruction, you can hear the song in banda, mariachi, and pop versions. It’s OK. Inspired, no doubt, by the heavy metaphysical symbology of the Thor movies, the banda video depicts a rainbow butterfly morphing into an onstage Jenni hologram. NO VALE LA PENA

And now, BILLBOARD’S TOP 5 REGIONAL MEXICAN SONGS:

1. La Adictiva Banda – “El Amor de Mi Vida” (#40 Hot Latin)
This lovey-dovey Horacio Palencia ballad is very boring, so the Blog’s SEO Optimization Team has asked that I make the most of things by reporting that La Adictiva’s singers are Isaac Salas and Guillermo Garza, the latter of whom shares a first name with Guillermo del Toro, producer of the forthcoming film Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. The movie looks cool; this song, also recorded by sierreño quartet Alta Consigna, is NO VALE LA PENA.

2. El Fantasma – “Encantadora” (#33 Hot Latin)
Now we’re talking. The man-myth-legend’s “Tu amor es que respiro” lyrics are hard to distinguish from Palencia’s, but the vaquero born Alexander García plows through all that sap like he’s racing his banda to the merch table. This song does NOT appear on García’s latest good album El Circo (Afinarte), on which the banda players routinely sound like they’re trying to trip their boss with their horns. Both album and single are VALE LA PENA. Also Pick to Click!

3. Calibre 50 – “Simplemente Gracias” (#20 Hot Latin)
Edén Muñoz remains one of the format’s most interesting lyricists, on a purely formal “watch me take pleasure in making these metaphors scan” level. When his band plays his ballads, they still sound like they’re gasping for breath. The Blog recommends their brand new, skippy hard luck tale “Chalito,” but this one is NO VALE LA PENA.

4. Banda Los Recoditos – “Perfecta” (#29 Hot Latin)
This is the third song in a row to use el cielo and las estrellas as romantic metaphors. It seems they are endless. La mujer’s beauty is endless. This particular metaphor’s usefulness is not endless. This song feels endless. NO VALE LA PENA

5. Banda MS – “Por Mi No Te Detengas” (#27 Hot Latin)
Wait a minute! Faithful reader, the Blog hasn’t yet directed you to my listicle for the Minneapolis City Pages: 10 times Banda MS, the world’s biggest brass band, didn’t totally blow. This single isn’t one of those times. NO VALE LA PENA

July 8, 2019 0

Joni Sandez on sierreño, “Las Mañanitas,” and “secrets nobody wants to say”

joni sandez

“The producer listening is probably gonna hate me — like, ‘No, don’t say that!'”

Joni Sandez is joking, but he’s eager to talk about parts of the norteño recording process usually kept under wraps. He knows from experience. A lifelong resident of southern California, Jonathan Sandez, 26, grew up playing guitar and bass. At 14 he joined the long-running L.A.-based Grupo El Tiempo, playing bass and singing backup amid a synthesized sound rooted in the ’80s and early ’90s. “Modern Tejano, grupero, norteño music,” he explains. “They had accordion, but the accordion was actually in the keyboard.”

Going solo as a bandleader, Sandez has pursued a more acoustic direction. He plays concerts, festivals, and private parties with norteño groups, up to five shows a night. One New Years Eve he played for 12 hours and was still able to sing at the end. He’s justifiably proud of this.

Like many young musicians, his recent music has been mostly sierreño — two guitars and a bass. His latest single is straight out of the Great Ranchera Songbook: “Las Mañanitas,” a fond birthday wish sung by everyone from Vicente Fernandez to Javier Solís to Los Tigres. With his bassist’s ear, Sandez has added some smooth walking chromaticism to the bottom end, a sound you won’t find in most oom-pah-pah I-IV-V versions.

During our 45-minute phone conversation (edited for length), Sandez told the Blog about making the switch to sierreño, the differences between tuba- and bass-bottomed music, and some lesser known tricks of the trade — “those hidden little secrets that nobody wants to say.” Follow “jonisandez” on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, and check out his website.

NorteñoBlog: Why did you start recording sierreño music?
Joni Sandez: It went back to my roots. The style of guitar was what I used to do, which was requinto. You know, all those tremolo-sounding riffs and terceras — two notes at a time, three half steps apart — and sextas, six steps apart. It was what I was playing back then, and most of the shows that we go to, they wanna hear that 12-string guitar. When you hear sierreño, you’ll hear the terceras — you won’t hear just one note, [he sings, outlining a triad] “dun dun dun dun dun”, you’ll hear [outinling the same triad] “drun drun drun drun drun.” It’s really subtle, too. A lot of people of people who aren’t familiar with the music won’t know about that. That makes it sierreña, you know?

Is that you playing requinto on your recordings?
Yes. Once in a while I’ll have somebody come through. It’s more having a little bit of variety — everybody has their own style of playing, and if it’s always me on the tracks, it becomes a little bit too played out. All the bass is me, but on the requinto I’ll try to have somebody come in and put in a couple of fill-ins for the track.

How did you decide to record “Las Mañanitas”?
There weren’t really a lot of modern artists, in general, and not even one sierreño artist [has recorded it]. It’s such a classic. [My version is] very different, in terms of the rhythm — the rhythm is not the traditional sierreño, it’s a descending little pattern. I really like it a lot.

Why do you think sierreño has gotten so popular in the last three or four years?
In the scene, when you have an accordion player, usually the accordion player charges a lot of money to play with you. I think a lot of people started recording sierreño tracks because it’s a lot cheaper. It’s one of those things that probably nobody wants to talk about, one of those hidden little secrets that nobody wants to say. When you record a sierreño track it’s a lot quicker, a lot faster, because you already have a guitar there. If you wanna have a norteño, then you have drums, and you wanna have an accordion, and you wanna have a bajo quinto, which is a little more expensive than a natural guitar. In sierreño you need a bass and a 12-string guitar, that’s basically it. And a six-string guitar. If you want, you can even play sierreño with six strings, which is kind of how it all got started.

Do you prefer having a sierreño band with a bassist or with a tubist?
Continue reading “Joni Sandez on sierreño, “Las Mañanitas,” and “secrets nobody wants to say”” →

January 21, 2019 0

Desfile de Éxitos 1/19/19

t3r airport

Puerto Rican trapstar Bad Bunny has pulled a Drake this week, clogging up Billboard‘s Hot Latin chart with 10 tracks from his debut album X 100pre. (The highest charting is, whaddya know, a duet with Drake.) NorteñoBlog has long admired Sr. Bunny’s charisma and barber while having almost no use for his music. The greatest insult? He’s Despacitoing norteño music into near nonexistence on Hot Latin. Regional Mexican acts account for only nine of the top 50 songs, one less than Bunny himself. The Blog tells you all this to explain why our Desfile de Éxitos format has changed. You can only type “Bad Bunny” so many times before the Donnie Darko flashbacks become too intense to deal with.

What follows are three mini-lists. First up are the three regional Mexican songs that appear only on the Hot Latin chart, i.e. not on Billboard‘s Regional Mexican Songs radio chart. As you’d expect, since radio factors less into their success, these three songs all have enormous YouTube streaming numbers. As you might not expect, they’re all by sierreño bands. One possible conclusion: sierreño is for cool internet kids. The next list is the Regional Mexican radio top 10: mostly banda, a couple cumbias, and one apiece of sierreño and mariacheño. The third list — of one song this week — is music outside the radio Top 10 that also appears on Hot Latin.

ONLY ON HOT LATIN

Fuerza Regida – “Radicamos En South Central” (#32 Hot Latin)
This sierreño gangsta nonsense is one high-living negocios signifier after another — I count appearances from Compas Tino and Chino, a bottle of Buchanan’s, and an X6 and a white Corvette, along with some good old-fashioned cocaine. The band is really good at switching from midtempo waltz to fast waltz on a dime, so that’s something. Now if they just learned to add backup vocals to their product placements, maybe they wouldn’t sound like they’re trapped in a cement bunker, playing under threat of torture. NO VALE LA PENA

T3R Elemento ft. Gerardo Ortiz – “Aerolinea Carrillo” (#33 Hot Latin)
The lead track from T3R’s 2018 album The Green Trip is ostensibly an ode to Pablo Escobar and his well-structured airborne narcotics business. It’s actually an ode to how cool it is to get high on a plane and sing about gangster shit. In the video, Kristopher Nava, the McLovin’ of the corridos verdes movimiento, chills in an airport lounge wearing a t-shirt that reads “Cookies” and refusing to enunciate. Sergio Cardenas, the band’s Cuban bassist, harmonizes beside him. Gerardo Ortiz plays a commercial airline pilot who smokes up in the cockpit and over-enunciates, well aware of the lurid cargo he’s transporting in his plane’s overhead compartments. Everyone nods a lot. Unlike Fuerza Regida, everyone here is in a good mood and knows the song they’re playing is patently dopey. VALE LA PENA y PICK TO CLICK

Grupo Arranke – “A Través del Vaso” (#39 Hot Latin)
“Una Para Mi Chiquitita (y Una Más Para My Sad Cowboy Hat That Reeks of Authenticity, Even Though My Song Comes From the Horacio Palencia Song Factory)” (Sierreño Versión)
NO VALE LA PENA

TOP 10 REGIONAL MEXICAN SONGS

1. Christian Nodal – “No Te Contaron Mal” (#11 Hot Latin)

2. Los Angeles Azules ft. Natalia LaFourcade – “Nunca Es Suficiente” (#9 Hot Latin)

3. Regulo Caro – “El Lujo de Tenerte” (#35 Hot Latin)

4. Banda El Recodo ft. David Bisbal – “Gracias Por Tu Amor” (#44 Hot Latin)

5. Banda Los Sebastianes – “A Través del Vaso” (#14 Hot Latin)
“Una Para Mi Chiquitita (y Una Más Para the Underwear Models in the Video)” (Banda Versión)
VALE LA PENA

6. Virlán Garcia – “Quiero Reintentarlo”
Virlán is horny as all get out, so it took an unusual triumph of will for him to keep this from becoming a slow jam. His sierreño band skips along, jaunty and desperate. Congas burble and the tuba line snaps at Virlán’s promises to kiss every corner of your body. VALE LA PENA

7. Banda MS – “Mejor Me Alejo” (#25 Hot Latin)

8. Raymix – “¿Dónde Estarás?”

9. El Fantasma – “Dolor y Amor”

10. Banda Los Recoditos – “Te Darán Ganas de Verme”

ALSO ON BOTH CHARTS

14. Calibre 50 – “¿Por Qué Cambiaste De Opinión?” (#50 Hot Latin)
Exactly what you expect from a Calibre ballad: a death march of self-righteous indignation aimed at a fickle mujer, from the dudes who just humble-bragged about going “Mitad y Mitad” with two different women. With his fondness for six-syllable rhymes, Edén Muñoz delights in language more than most of his songwriting cohort, and “No vayas a llorar, que nadie te va abrazar” is a cold kiss-off — but their self pity is dull enough without the band deflating before your ears. NO VALE LA PENA