In recent weeks, efforts from both U.S. and Mexico to curb cartel violence and drug trafficking have focused on a centuries-old form of folk music: the corrido.
Some state and city officials claim that modern incarnations of the style of music glorify violence and drugs. But Celestino Fernández, a writer and sociologist who’s studied corridos extensively, says that reflects a limited understanding of what these songs are and the social function they serve.
Fernández joined The Show to discuss the origins and significance of corridos.
Full conversation
CELESTINO FERNÁNDEZ: The corrido is almost like the editorial page of a newspaper where a topic is discussed, analyzed, and then from the, that perspective, usually towards the end there might be a recommendation or you know, kind of the moral of the story and corridos do that as well.
And incidentally, that perspective is usually from what is known as El Pueblo, which is the folk, the common people.
SAM DINGMAN: In a piece that you wrote about this and, and perhaps as an example, you write about a corrido called “El Corrido de Rosita Alvírez.”
FERNÁNDEZ: Oh yes.
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DINGMAN: Tell us the story that is told in that corrido and why it's indicative of, of what you're talking about.
FERNÁNDEZ: This woman wants to go to a dance. The husband doesn't want to go, so she says, well, you know, I like to go alone. And then the husband comes, and she's dancing with what is said in the corrido, his rival. And of course he pulls out his gun and shoots both the, the man and, and his wife.
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All corridos basically have the following structure. The opening is a call to the audience because the emphasis on, in corridos is about the story being told, the words, not about the music. And so a lot of corridos begin with the line “estes el corrido.” This is the corrido about.
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So the corrido begins with an entrance, an opening. And then they followed by the body, the details of the story. And then there's closure. And a lot of corridos will say, “estos fueron los corrido,” that this was a corrido about. Or I see “estos fueron los versos,” these were the verses about.
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The story is over.
DINGMAN: How much does the music vary? Just as you said they're, they're mostly about the words.
FERNÁNDEZ: Historically, it was one voice, one guitar. In modern corridos, you know, from the early ‘50s on, norteño bands play a lot of corridos, so the music is norteño.
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Since about 2019 or so, we have a whole different subgenre called corridos tumbados, which the music there is urban rap.
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DINGMAN: One of the things that you also write about in the piece that you wrote is generally speaking, the facts in one of these songs are pretty close to what's happening, there's a little bit of poetic license sometimes, but these are sort of considered like reliable historical documents of events, right?
FERNÁNDEZ: Oh, absolutely. In fact, there's a book on the Mexican revolution where an historian Merle Simmons uses corridos as the source documents. Because they were very accurate in describing battles and personalities in the battles and the idea is that true events inspire them.
So for example, when President Kennedy was assassinated, he was a very popular president both with Mexican-Americans and Mexicans. And within two weeks of his assassination, there were 16 corridos composed about him.
You know, anything, event, any major personality will inspire corridos. When President Obama was running for office in the first round, you know, this made international news and why wouldn’t orristas, the corrido composers, not also compose corridos about that.
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DINGMAN: These songs go back as far as like the 1800s. Do we know what function they played when they first came into existence? Were they always works of art or were they intended to be sort of like informational?
FERNÁNDEZ: Principally informational. And the trovadores, the singers, would go wherever people gathered in plazas, marketplaces, people came on after church, and they carried the news of the day. And in that period, the majority of people were illiterate. They couldn't read a newspaper, radio wasn't around, and so the corridos were educational.
DINGMAN: So one of the reasons that corridos have been in the news more recently is because of this phenomenon of the narcocorrido. Tell us what those are.
FERNÁNDEZ: Yes, those are corridos that deal with issues pertaining to drug trafficking or drug lords. It's interesting because the initial ones for many years, the moral of the story is don't get involved in this because you will end up dead or in jail. But say since that, it's only the 1990s forward, the message is more, you know, you can make money and have women moving drugs.
At least 25 years ago in the city of Tijuana across from San Diego, they tried to ban the plane of narcocorridos and that didn't work. Now several states in Mexico that said they are banning it. And most recently people got upset because a group, a norteño band in Guadalajara at one of the universities, did a, a concert. And they projected images on the screen of one of the narcos, and, you know, that quote offended end of quote a lot of people.
It's not really, that's not the motive for people composing corridos. They, narcocorridos did not create drug trafficking. They are documenting a phenomenon that has touched the entire world. Having a corrido about the event documents it in a way different from radio, television, social media.
DINGMAN: Right. It's different than like a feature about it on CNN.
FERNÁNDEZ: Exactly, because it's, it's, it's of the people by the people, if you will, for the people, for the folk.
