"Los Músicos": Mexican Corridos, the Aural Border, and the Evocative Musical Renderings of Transnational Youth

In this research article, Cati V. de los Ríos examines US-Mexican transnational youths' engagement with the Mexican musical genre corridos, border folk ballads, and its subgenre, narcocorridos, folk ballads that illuminate elements of the drug trade and often glamorize drug cartels. She draws f...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Harvard educational review 2019-06, Vol.89 (2), p.177-200
Main Author: de los Ríos, Cati V
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
20th century
Ballads
Binding
Community Relations
Consciousness
Consciousness Raising
Crime
Cultural Context
Cultural Influences
Cultural Maintenance
Drug Abuse
Education
English Language Learners
Ethnography
Folk Culture
Foreign Countries
Genre
Global Approach
Globalization
High School Students
Hispanic American Students
Immigrants
Immigration
Language
Learning
Learning Processes
Linguistics
Literacy
Low Income Groups
Migrant Children
Migrants
Music
Musical Composition
Musical performances
Musicians
Musicians & conductors
Popular Culture
Resistance (Psychology)
Social Systems
Transnationalism
Violence
Youth
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Summary:In this research article, Cati V. de los Ríos examines US-Mexican transnational youths' engagement with the Mexican musical genre corridos, border folk ballads, and its subgenre, narcocorridos, folk ballads that illuminate elements of the drug trade and often glamorize drug cartels. She draws from ethnographic methods to present empirical knowledge of four young musicians' critical readings of these genres and their place-making and community-binding practices across their public high school. She demonstrates how these transnational youth draw from their communicative practices to construct meaningful communities on their school campus and details how their evocative musical school performances serve as a cultural resistance to contemporary anti-migrant sentiments. Rather than positioning youth consumption of narcocorridos as simply a "deviant" activity, the findings argue that youth engage critically, intellectually, and aesthetically with narcocorridos as a popular culture practice and that some songs carry important transnational critiques and lessons on capitalism, state-sanctioned violence, and globalization.
ISSN:0017-8055
1943-5045
DOI:10.17763/1943-5045-89.2.177