Manuel wrote:
"Narco corridos are songs that tell stories about the
drug-smuggling business and the smugglers along the Tex-Mex
border. Quite a hard-boiled genre of music, actually, and
some of the musicians are just as hard as their music (e.g.,
Chalino Sanchez)."
Yeah, that's what I was talking about. I've only started to
read Elijah Wald's Corridos and Narcocorridos, which has an
accompanying CD (sold separately). I must say that coming
from a rock perspective, the music sounds a bit odd, almost
polkaish, traditional, and maybe a bit tame. But the lyrics
(judging by Wald's translations, since I'm a non-Spanish
speaker) are anything but. They're as tough as anything in
gangsta rap, and many are supposed to be based on real people
and incidences
(although somewhat to heavily mythologized) -- hell, some
dealers even commission corridos about themselves.
And you're right about Chalino Sanchez having a hell of a
story. According to the short bio in Wald's book, an assassin
came at him onstage, gun drawn. He pulled his own gun and
started blazing away. A few months later, he was taken away
from a traffic stop by a few men with official credentials.
His body was found in the desert the next day. Supposedly Sam
Quinones's True Tales from Mexico covers that story in some
detail. Have you read it, Manuel? How is it?
Mark
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