Corrido

Related Topics:
Corridors_and_Parallels

Corrido is also a type of song in Capoeira music. For the Italian commune, see Corrido, Italy.

The corrido is a popular narrative song and poetry form of the mestizo Mexican cultural area (which includes the Southern states of USA, taken from Mexican sovereignship in the mid to late 19th. Century). Derived along the 18th. century from Spanish "romance", among other popular forms brought from Europe, in its most known form consists of 1) a salutation from the singer and prologue to the story; 2) the story itself; 3) a moral and a farewell from the singer.

Themes

Various themes are featured in Mexican corridos, and corridos lyrics are often old legends and ballads about a famed criminal or hero in the frontiers of northern Mexico (analogous to the western U.S.). Some corridos may also be love stories. Contemporary corridos written within the past few decades feature much more modern themes

Form

Corridos, like rancheras, have introductory instrumental music and adornos interrupting the stanzas of the lyrics. However, unlike rancheras, its rhythm remains fairly consistent. The corrido has a rhythm very much similar to the European waltz; rancheras can be played at a variety of rhythms. Corridos often tell stories, while rancheras may be more poem-like.

Like rancheras, corridos can be played by mariachi, norteño, banda, duranguense, Tejano and grupero bands. The instruments used to play the song differs with the type of band that plays the corrido.

History

Until the arrival and success of electronic mass-media (mid-20th century), the corrido served in Mexico as the main informational and educational outlet, even with subversive purposes, due to its apparent linguistic and musical simplicity, appropriate for oral transmission. After the spread of radio and television, the genre has evolved into a new stage and is still in process of maturity, despite that most scholars consider the corrido to be dead or agonizing since then (see affirmations of Vicente T. Mendoza, El corrido mexicano, 1954).

The earliest living specimens of corrido are transculturated versions of Spanish romances or European tales, mainly about disgraced or idealized love, or religious topics. These, that include (among others) "La Martina" and "La Delgadina", show the same basic stylistic features of the mainstream of later corridos (1/2 or 3/4 tempo and "verso menor" lyric composing, meaning verses of eight or less phonetic syllables, grouped in strophes of six or less verses).

It would be until the Independence war (1810-1821), through the Mexican Revolution (1910-1921) and the religious and cacical clashes (1926-1934) originated by the new Establishment that the genre flourished and acquired its so-called and betold "epic" tones, along with the three-step narrative structure told before, producing the gross of the known living specimens, which relate to revolutionary, religious or social leaders, the same as their makings or even their "martyrdom".

With the consolidation of "Presidencialismo" (the politic Establishment that came after Mexican Revolution) and the success of electronic mass-media, the corrido lost the most of its informational role, becoming part of a folklorist cult on one branch, and on another, the voice of the new subversives: oppressed workers, drug growers or traffickers; leftist activists, emigrated farmworkers (mainly to the USA)... This is what scholars call the "decaying" stage of the genre, which tends to erase the stylistic or structural characteristics of "revolutionary" or traditional corrido, without a clear and unified understanding of its evolution. This is mainly signified by the "narcocorrido", egocentric ballads paid for by drug smugglers to anonymous and almost illiterate composers (more about this asserts in Spanish_Wikipedia).

In mestizo-Mexican cultural area those three variants of corrido (transcultured romances, "Revolution corrido" and the modern version) are both alive and sung, along with sister narrative-popular genres, such as the "valona" of Michoacán state, the "son arribeño" of the Sierra Gorda (Guanajuato, Hidalgo and Querétaro states) and others. Its vitality and flexibility allow original corrido lyrics to be built on non-Mexican musical genres, such as blues and ska, and even non-Spanish lyrics, like the ones composed or translated by Mexican indigenous communities or by the "Chicano" people in USA, in English or "Spanglish".

Soon, further comments on the linguistic characterization of corrido.

Musical Characteristics

The corrido was originally performed as a melodically simple tune with guitar accompaniment. It was performed in a fast waltz time and now commonly adopts a polka rhythm. Since the commercialization of the corrido, it has often performed by conjuntos produced professionally by recording companies.

Wikilinks

Here is a PDF_in_Spanish by the same author with complementary information and a research proposal.

Renowned folklorist Dr. Americo Paredes //www.lib.utexas.edu/benson/paredes/index.html (1915-1999) has transcribed several corridos from the Texas - Mexico border.

Dan Dickey has concisely summarized the corrido //www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/CC/lhc1_print.html for The University of Texas at Austin's Handbook of Texas Online.

Other Resources

Americo Paredes. "With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and its Hero" (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958)

Richard Flores. "The Corrido and the Emergence of Texas-Mexican Social Identity" (Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 105, Spring 1992)

Dan Dickey. "The Kennedy Corridos: A Study of the Ballads of a Mexican American Hero" (Center for Mexican-American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 1978)

Merle Simmons. "The Mexican Corrido as a Source of an Interpretive Study of Modern Mexico, 1870-1950" (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1957).