Whenever I am around immigrants or in a heavily Mexican community,on both the east and west coasts, I constantly hear blaring Mexican music coming from any open window in a house or step side pickup truck within my sight. This music has sounded EXACTLY the same for my entire life. Mariachi like or something. I never hear any Mexican teeny boppers or rap or rock. Only this very distinct Mexican tunage that makes you want to throw on a sombrero or something.
I realize that there are mexican music acts out there that don’t sound like they have been around since the 70s but most of what the immigrant population listens to sounds EXACTLY the same as it has forever. Why is this?
Because Mexicans have no new ideas, they just keep doing the same crap over and over. And the old ideas were never that good to begin with. Watch Univision and decide for yourself.
When I drive by any construction site in America I hear the same classic rock music from 30 years ago blaring on the stereos! Have Americans not come up with any new music since then? I have to hear Stairway to Heaven one more time…
I’m not Mexican, or even hispanic, but I think it may be a case of not having a trained ear.
I could just as easily say that European music hasn’t changed in the same period; it’s all that same drum machine/synthesized dance music crap. Or that rap or rock haven’t changed either.
That’s not true, obviously, but to someone who doesn’t listen to that kind of music often, or even at all would be hard pressed to identify why Eric B & Rakim are different from say… Kanye West.
I suspect the same thing is going on with you and Mexican music.
“Or something”? What you’re hearing is probably ranchera or nortena–the Mexican equivalent to North American country-western music, which is equally unchanging as the music you’re complaining about here.
Maybe it’s because all you’re listening to is music that’s blaring from windows.
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to infiltrate, confiscate iPods, and expose the conspiracy.
I live in an agricultural community with a large Mexican population, so I’ll make a WAG. Most of the Mexican migrant workers come, not from border towns or Mexico City, but from the very rural parts of southern Mexico, like Michocan and Oaxaca (at least that’s what I’ve been told). Being from what we would call “the sticks”, and being very poor, they’re not heavily influenced by American pop culture. Being very poor makes it hard to purchase the fancy electronic gadgets and instruments required to make “modern” pop music, so they play traditional instruments, which happen to be best suited to playing traditional music.
But then there are the Mexican recording artists who continue to play these types of music, but I think a lot of them are based in the US and they realize that most of their paying audience is going to consist of these “rural” immigrants who want to hear what they’re used to hearing, rather than Mexicans who continue to live in Mexico City or border towns, so they play the traditional music because that’s where the money is.
I also get the impression that the various Mexican music genres are more rigidly defined than the “American” genres we’re used to. And each genre has its own specific instrumentation, and the instrumentation of one genre doesn’t lend itself to “crossing over” into another genre. A Mexican brass band consisting of trumpets, trombones, a tuba, and some saxophones can’t easily cross over into mariachi music, which calls for mostly guitars, guitarróns, violins, and a few wind instruments. Norteño music, which probably makes up the bulk of what you’ve heard, traditionally uses just a bajo sexto (a baritone 12-string guitar) and an accordion, but more modern norteño artists also incorporate electric bass guitar and drums, and often a saxophone. The “oom-pah oom-pah” you hear is probably norteño music.
This is all quite different from American popular music, where each genre might have certain “signature” combinations of instruments, but beyond that there’s no rigidly set list of instruments that a certain genre “must” or “must not” utilize, and each genre borrows liberally from other genres. You might hear a steel guitar or banjo in a rock song, or a synthesizer in a country song, but you’re unlikely to hear an electric guitar in a Mexican brass band song.
Very well put. The proof of everything you say is a Mexico City group like Cafe Tacuba. Just listen to ONE of their albums – “Re” – and you will be treated to at least TEN different genres of music (ska, rock, punk, folk, Cuban son, cumbia, norteño, ranchera, “trio” (three male singers harmonizing over three kinds of acoustic guitar), club dance music, synth pop…), all with a touch unique to that group. But a country bumpkin from Michoacan or Oaxaca will rarely listen to a group like Cafe Tacuba. To hear it played on someone’s radio or whatever, that person would probably be a university-educated professional from one of the larger cities in Mexico – in other words, exactly the kind of person NOT likely to move into your neighborhood and mow your lawn.
FWIW, KEXP now has a weekly specialty show dedicated to Latino music, “El Sonido”. It airs and streams Monday evenings from 6-9pm Pacific time, and there should be one or two shows available on the archive. You might want to check it out.
Here’s the song of theirs that Americans would be most likely to be familiar with - as you can hear, it sounds like, well, like 80’s-influenced rock that happens to be sung in Spanish. Which is what it is.
Yea, confirming what others said. What you’re hearing is their genres that are equivalent to the US country and western type of music. The twangs haven’t changed that much, and like that genre, not ALL of the US is a rabid listener of that genre.
One of my exes really disliked that type of music, and didn’t like it that he had to listen to it at work, since most of the other coworkers where fans. Like the equivalent of having to listen to country all day, everyday, when you’re a heavy metal fan.
Mexico is HUGE! There are scores of pop and other rock groups that are very commonly known. Café Tacuba has been mentioned, Maná and Molotov are also two other well known rock groups, with sounds distinct from each other.
In the pop scene, I’m less savvy as to when a group is Mexican or just from other country but made it big in Mexico, but I know both Paulina Rubio and Thalia are two well known Mexican artists, just to give an example. I think Belanova is another pop group, as well as a band called Ov7 (I don’t listen to that one)…
I haven’t heard it in a long time, but in Texas the Mexican music I was always exposed to was actually Tex-Mex, with accordions and stuff that supposedly crossed over from Central Texas German music. Like Tex-Mex enchiladas and burritos, I wonder if someone from southern Mexico would know what that was.
Careful, the RIAA will be coming after you for your clear admission that you are pirating music through open windows. Buy it for yourself, loser!
As others have said, a whole lot of American music sounds the same, and we’re still listening to the same old rock songs produced over the last 50 years or so.
That’s conjunto music. This article(originally from the Texas Observer) tells how norteño music is making inroads on this side of the Border. It’s from Northern Mexico & sounds somewhat similar; Germans & other Central Europeans took their accordions everywhere. But Tejanos aren’t happy…
The Clear-Channelization that’s homogenizing all regional radio is mentioned–along with the fact that Tejano kids tend to speak English instead of Spanish. But all is not lost; the Texas Tornadoes played Houston’s Discovery Park a few weeks ago. Led by Shawn Sahm, son of the Late Great Doug, with Augie Meyers on keyboard & Flaco Jimenez on accordion, they played true Tex-Mex-Polka-Rock fusion & made a very mixed crowd very happy.
Fairly new on this side of the Border is Banda music. Also German influenced, they use horns, woodwinds & a bit of percussion to play some pretty fine stuff. Here’s a slightly ragged group showing where the sound began; there are some slick, big-time bandas using synths, too. You’ll hear workers from Northern Mexico listening to banda; not sure what the guys from the far South like.
Years ago, the excellent Cafe Tacuba played the Houston International Festival & kicked off Rock en Espanol in our city. Mexican music includes rock, tech, shmoopy ballads & lots of tropical sounds for dancing. You just don’t hear all this stuff on the worksites.
And let me tell you, those bandas play really effin’ loud! We host Mexican dances from time to time at the convention center where I work, and the promoter usually brings in 3-5 different acts to perform, in different genres, and there’s usually at least one banda in the lineup. And let me tell you, I’ve listened to local metal bands that don’t play that loud. And don’t be fooled into thinking it’s “older people’s music”, either. It’s as popular with the young Mexicans as with the old. If I stick my head into the room where the dance is taking place, the area in front of the stage is packed with pretty young Mexican women and well-dressed young Mexican men cheering the band.
My point was that there are still large numbers of Americans listening to the same shit they listened to 30-50 years ago and I don’t see any reason why Mexicans would be any different. Not to mention large numbers of new groups playing music that is indistinguishable from stuff at least 20 years old or older.
Add to that your likely inability to distinguish subtle differences in a musical milieu you are unfamiliar with. If it truly is Mexican C&W, then you can easily find areas of the US where the music sounds like it should be coming out of an old AM radio.
It was an exaggeration, actually. I know that all European music doesn’t sound the same.
I was trying to make the point that if say… a person from Japan visited the US twice 30 years apart, they might be hard pressed to identify that say… George Strait or Dolly Parton are different from Faith Hill or Keith Urban. Yes, country music has changed in the intervening 30 years, but it’s also stayed more or less the same, and without knowing what to listen for, you could tell it was more or less the same, but wouldn’t necessarily be able to identify the differences over 30 years.
I suspect it’s the same for the Mexican music that the OP was describing, especially if you can’t tell Norteno apart from anything els.e
Actually, living in Texas, I hear a LOT of different kinds of “Mexican” music. It isn’t all the same by a long shot.
Strangely enough, you’ll find a LOT of Mexican headbangers. Seriously, going back as far as the mid-Seventies, a lot of Mexican kids have been into the whole metal scene.
