The Story of Narcocorridos--Right or Wrong

Bouncing around the roads of rural Mexico with long-haul truckers who picked him up hitchhiking, Elijah Wald had a captive audience. And that is exactly what the Cambridge, Mass., native wanted.

A former world-music critic for the Boston Globe, Wald was launched on an unusual yearlong quest that would produce a book chronicling the history of the narcocorrido, the modern-day twist on the ballads of rural Mexico traditionally sung by men and driven by accordion-style polkas and waltzes.

Evolving in 19th century rural Mexico from Spanish minstrel styles, corridos told heroic tales of outlaws, smuggling and gunmen. But in recent years, they had morphed into controversial songs that recounted the exploits of Mexico’s contemporary drug trade.

Though Wald had set off hitchhiking to save money, he soon realized that being stuck with lonely and garrulous blue-collar truck drivers for hours on end was the perfect way to research his topic.

“All the truck drivers are corrido nuts,” says Wald, who speaks Spanish. “I’d tell them what I was doing, and they’d pull out tapes. One guy stopped at three different places until we found the tape he wanted me to listen to. They also had a lot of lore, not only about the subject but about the corridos and the singers. It was a very good education, as well as giving me a feel for the audience.”

Some might wonder if Wald felt nervous hitchhiking and asking questions about a subculture filled with murderous characters who shoot first and ask questions later.

But Wald, who first hitchhiked through Mexico in 1987 with his guitar, playing for tips, finds the country “one of the most massively hospitable places on the planet.” Using truckers’ help and making inquiries as he went, Wald tracked down singers and songwriters, sometimes in remote parts of rural Mexico.

Some were famous. Others had never been interviewed before. Wald writes that many were initially suspicious and feared he would steal their songs.

But they were eventually won over by his tenacity, enthusiasm and love of music--Wald is an accomplished guitarist and approached the musicians as a fellow musician, often playing for them and recording their music on a player he carried everywhere.

Out of Wald’s research comes “Narcocorrido, A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns and Guerrillas.” Published in November by Rayo Press, an imprint of Harper Collins, the book is available in Spanish and English. In conjunction with the book, Fonovisa has released a companion CD of songs (“Corridos y Narcocorridos”) handpicked by Wald and featuring corrido giants discussed in the book such as Los Tigres del Norte and Lupillo Rivera. “How often in a writer’s life do you get a whole field of music which no one has done a book on,” asks Wald, who is up for two Grammys tonight for work on other projects. “You can use the corrido as a window to look into just about anything contemporary in Mexican culture through eyes of working-class songwriters rather than educated elites.

“Every important composer of the corrido, with the exception of Chalino [who was murdered in Sinaloa in 1992] is still around and more than willing to talk.”

A fast-paced blend of music, history, personal travel memoir and reportage, “Narcocorrido” has been praised for its insights into a musical genre that has been little-known outside working-class and rural Mexican communities on both sides of the border. The book is unique, says Guillermo E. Hernandez, a professor of Spanish and director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, who says that Wald “had an insight into the culture that few outsiders have had.”

It is only now that the populist music is beginning to get some respect and attention from the academic and literary worlds.

“The genre of corridos themselves has been marginalized as a folk tradition among rural people, and learned and educated people came to disdain it, they didn’t think there was value to it,” says Hernandez. But Wald’s work helps change that. “He’s dealing with the genius of the composer and the folk tradition that feeds them. He went beyond the drug world to understand that the genre has a network of composers, and some are humble people who compose and perform their songs in buses and others travel in private jets and play before thousands of people.”

Indeed, you might call Wald a rogue sociologist who specializes in fieldwork collecting the stories of contemporary troubadours. He wants to document their origins, their history, their struggles and their victories. And often in the book, you get the feeling that for Wald, the journey is as enjoyable as the destination.

Tracking Down

Songwriters

One wordsmith Wald was eager to track down was Paulino Vargas, whose songs dating from the 1950s he had heard in the New York office of American folklorist Alan Lomax. Told that Vargas lived in Durango, Wald hitchhiked there, only to learn that he had moved to Mexico City. So he stuck out his thumb and got a ride to the capital, where the trail led him to a corner store and a young woman who promised to pass on the message.

That evening Vargas called, and they agreed to meet at the store, which turned out to be owned by his daughter. The great songwriter lived in an apartment upstairs.

“Songwriters are a pretty articulate bunch; they’re funny and eloquent, even those that can’t read and write,” Wald says. “I wanted to give them a way to talk about it in their own words, because these are fascinating people.”

Wald recounts how many of the songwriters and musicians came from grinding poverty and were functionally illiterate, although others are self-educated men whose bookshelves were crammed with philosophy and history.

Wald talked to songwriters commissioned by drug lords to compose odes to their glory, a common practice in drug-fueled states such as Sinaloa.

In the Sinaloan hill town of Badiraguato, which is widely known as the birthplace of generations of marijuana and cocaine traffickers, Wald tracked down one man who, as the tale went, had been kidnapped by some narcos and locked in a room until he had composed a corrido of their deeds.

Finding the musician at last, Wald put the question to him and was told with a laugh that the writer composed the song voluntarily for the drug trafficker and that the whole business took less than an hour.

Other songwriters told Wald that they preferred not to name names in the songs, since this could lead to trouble. And in general, Wald writes, anyone with money can hire a songwriter to pen a tune.

“They give me a list telling me the name of their ranchos, what they do for a living, if they want me to mention what they do for a living,” one Sinaloan songwriter told Wald. “Some want their name to be used, some not ... because if a corrido comes out saying that they have two, three women and he has a wife at home, when he gets back she’ll be after him with a broomstick.”

Using Ballads to Spread the News

Throughout rural Mexico where literacy rates are low, the corrido traditionally was used as a sort of oral “newspaper” to spread the news. Today that practice continues. Wald interviewed corridistas writing about the Zapatista guerrillas of Chiapas and peasant massacres in Guerrero. The book cites corridos snatched from the headlines on both sides of the border: corruption scandals involving former Mexican President Carlos Salinas and his brother Raul; the plight of undocumented workers; drug addiction; the Gulf War; the 1992 Los Angeles riots and even the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, in which the former U.S. president is lauded for his amatory prowess.

Wald also visited Los Angeles, which he calls “the new corrido frontier,” where the narcocorrido genre flourishes thanks to a plethora of record companies, singers, songwriters, clubs and thousands of young Mexican American fans. In Los Angeles, at least one radio station tried to promote itself by not playing any corridos. Several Mexican states have banned narcocorridos from the radio altogether.

Indeed, almost everyone involved with corridos is sensitive to allegations that many of the songs glorify drug lords and drug use. However, the singers and songwriters say they’re only chronicling real life and point out that the best songs discuss the plague of drug addiction and violent death as well as the perceived glory of the trade. Many laud the corrido for providing young people with insight on their musical heritage.

“Were it not for the narcocorrido, they’d be listening to Eminem, but now they listen to the narcocorrido, and it gets them into this whole Mexican pride, and soon they’re listening to Jose Alfredo Jimenez,” says Wald, citing a 1950s Mexican star who combined the songwriting ability of George Gershwin with the fame of Frank Sinatra.

At least one review has faulted Wald for not explaining the corrido within the context of Mexico and America’s war on drugs, but his is not an academic or political treatise, nor is it the knowing tale of an insider.

In fact, Rene Alegria, editorial director of Rayo Publishing, says Wald’s distance from the culture actually helped him understand the music.

“When you’re in the fold, it’s sometimes difficult to have perspective,” Alegria says. “There’s really no book out there like this that addresses the music in a broader context: socially, historically and especially the oral tradition.”

Corridos are only the latest manifestation of Wald’s passion for indigenous and roots music. One of Wald’s Grammy nominations is for best historical album as co-producer, with Chris Strachwitz, of the 40th anniversary collection of Arhoolie Records, the California label specializing in blues and ethnic music. Wald also wrote the liner notes, which have been nominated in the best album notes category.

The book and the Grammy nomination cap a lifetime of interest in American music for Wald, who recalls playing Woody Guthrie songs on guitar at age 7. He calls himself a “traditional American musician” who at various times has played jazz, blues, New Orleans and roots music.

Though he has studied with musicians on three continents, Wald attended New York University for only one year, and then only because it was near Greenwich Village, where he wanted to study with a particular guitarist.

He then spent a decade traveling the globe, supporting himself for a time as a blues musician in Seville, Spain. After moving back to Cambridge, he landed a job as world music critic for the Globe. He has also written a critically praised biography about a blues legend called “Josh White: Society Blues.”

Wald’s next project delves into the legend of blues musician Robert Johnson. Meanwhile, he’s enjoying feedback from corrido singers and songwriters in Mexico who have read the book in Spanish as well as Latin American bands on this side of the border.

“I’m intensely aware of how lucky I am,” Wald says. “This isn’t my culture, I haven’t grown up around corridos. But people have been very helpful and encouraging. There’s been no backlash. It’s not like there were all these people running around trying to interview corrido composers.”

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Wald will read at UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center on Thursday at 3:30 p.m.