Friday, June 5, 1998
Corridos and controversy
ART: Mexico’s most debated musical form speak for itself during
Fowler exhibit
By Terry Tang
Daily Bruin Contributor
Adultery. Incest. Drug trafficking. Although these vices are too
explicit to be the subject of lullabies, they are some of the
themes in the poetic Mexican corrido.
A ballad form which dates back more than two centuries, the
corrido began as an oral tradition of telling stories of the heroes
and bandits surrounding local events.
The musical genre will speak for itself through a premiere
exhibition at the Fowler Museum. Opening Sunday, "Corridos Sin
Fronteras: The Art of a Ballad Tradition In Mexico and the U.S."
marks the first time the lyrical narrative will be showcased inside
gallery walls. The exhibition also gives a mainstream audience the
chance to learn how this narrative form transcends Mexican popular
culture.
Each corrido comments on crucial events ranging from natural
disasters to revolutions. However, outside communities commonly
misperceive the corrido as songs that promote these controversial
issues.
"(Outside communities) think they’re all the same – they’re all
negative or they all praise negative values. But … that’s not the
case," says Guillermo Hernandez, co-curator and director of the
Chicano Studies Research Center. "Corridos are really for looking
inside the culture. They are judgments that people make about
particular events. And traditional corrido heroes are
representative of the positive values in the midst of a tragic
situation."
Aside from playing 16 different ballads throughout the gallery –
in chronological order – the sound-driven exhibition uses visual
aids like historical photographs and instruments to highlight local
heroes and talented corridistas. Although the human voice is
considered the primary instrument, the corrido has grown with time
to encompass the accordion, drums and even the saxophone. However,
the exhibition showcases the melodic role of the guitar through
displays and a guitar-making demonstration.
"We actually have a family from East Los Angeles called the
"Candelas" family," explains co-curator Isabel Castro-Melendez.
"For the past three generations, they have been the premiere
guitar-makers – craftsmen – that have made guitars for (Andre)
Segovia all the way on to Mick Jagger and other rock stars."
Besides broadening its array of instruments, the corrido has
expanded into the mass media. With the technological innovations of
electronic recording, CDs and the Internet, the popular genre
continues to garner a wide, commercial appeal.
"There’s a lot of dance clubs where they still dance to
corrido-type music. Particularly, it’s all through the northern
part of California all the way down to the border towns, all the
way into areas of Mexico," Castro-Melendez explains. "In Texas,
there’s a lot of corrido fanaticism. People like the music and they
dance to it, they’ll sing to it. When you’re at restaurants,
musicians will play it a lot. And of course, you play them in your
car, in your home. It’s really everywhere."
The notoriety of the corrido is indicated by how quickly the
idea for the exhibition became a reality. At the same time that the
Fowler Museum had gallery space available, Hernandez and colleagues
in the Chicano Studies Center organized the Third International
Conference on the corrido. Soon, the two-day conference of scholars
and artists expanded to include not only the exhibition, but a
Mexican film festival and a benefit concert in Royce Hall.
"It started with a conference and it’s kind of mushroomed into
these other events," explains Moses Galindo, the event coordinator.
"At the previous conferences, they always had a concert afterwards.
This year, we were thinking, ‘Well, we’re at UCLA. We should do
something that UCLA would do.’ We’re trying to uphold the
reputation. So, we went after Los Tigres del Norte, which is one of
the most popular bands."
In spite of good intentions, the corrido has a antagonistic
history with social censors. Although most people in Mexico’s
middle class express indifference toward the musical genre, others
in the "status quo" reject and belittle the musical genre. The
corrido is often accused of not being real art or having no value,
and has even come under attack by law.
"Actually, there have been several – passed in Mexico – local
regulations forbidding radio stations from playing corridos and
selling those corridos. And what has happened is that they’ve
become even more popular," Hernandez asserts. "And even in this
country, some of the audiences are harassed by police when they go
to the concerts."
His extensive study into the musical archives of the Mexican
ballad tradition has led Hernandez to an array of regions where the
corridos first took place. With roots in Spanish, Morrocan and
Judeo-Spanish culture, many of the oral narratives died out because
of a lack of popularity. As a result, there is no way to account
for the thousands of corridos that might have achieved value
today.
"We lost most of our history because there was nobody there to
record it. We have preserved our history, but it’s just probably
fragments of the whole humanity," Hernandez says.
"The history of human kind is just fragments. So, this is the
same thing. I wish somebody had been there recording this back in
1820."
Still a cultural staple of today, the corrido is as crucial to
the Mexican people as breathing and eating.
"If Mexican food were known in only a few Mexican restaurants
where Mexican people ate Mexican food, we are now presenting the
musical equivalent of tacos, enchilada, carne asada," Hernandez
declares.
ART: "Corridos Sin Fronteras" opens June 7 at the Fowler Museum
and shows through Sept. 27. Admission is free through Dec. For more
information, call (310) 825-4361.
PATIL ARMENIAN
The UCLA Fowler Museum presents "Corridos Sin Fronteras: The Art
of a Ballad Tradition in Mexico and the U.S." The display will open
on June 7th and will be up until Sep. 7th.