Critical Review Set # 2/ # 4

Elijah Wald in “Polka Contrabandista: Mexican Ballads in a Modern Age” provides a neat introduction to norteña music, specifically the form known as the corrido. She provides first a musical introduction, tracing the genre lineage to a mix of Spanish-American musical forms and central European forms. He then tells the history of corrido, as it moved from its inception to its eulogizing role in the Mexican Revolution up until its initial drop in popularity at the hands of the bolero and romance. Nonetheless, his paper subsequently deals largely with the sudden resurgence of the corrido, and a special form known as the narcocorrido. She performs lyric analysis, discusses the origin of the most famous norteña acts, and ruminates on the nature of its folklore. A significant portion of the article deals with the cultural role of norteña currently. Wald argues that in this respect the form of the corrido functions (or at least sees itself) as both a newspaper and an arbiter of cultural legacy. This latter function is evidenced, Wald points out, by the way traficantes supply corrido writers with funding and details about themselves, in exchange for the immortalization of a good corrido. Wald concludes by noting that despite the moral hazard of its implicit condoning the drug trade, the corrido remains a remarkably resilient and culturally relevant musical form.

Elijah Wald makes an interesting point with regard to the popular attitude displayed in corridos. Towards the traficante heroes of narcocorridos, she writes that “unlike the big agricultural and industrial magnates, they come from the people and spend their money at home” (Wald 226), thus allowing them to be lionized despite the enormous costs of their profession. This juxtaposes sharply against the generally hostile emotions displayed towards fellow Mexicans who immigrated to the United States and found a modicum of financial success (exemplified in “La Jaula de Oro”, a norteña hit by Los Tigres del Norte). This seems to counter the charge that the corridos function like a newspaper, instead suggesting that they are more like nationalistic folk songs. Is this a valid observation?