Mexico's Revolution Day is celebrated November 20. As such it is also, to a great extent, corrido day. For the corrido a narriative, particularly Mexican, musical form born in the 17th century was a kind of oral news magazine of the 1910 Revolution. In a land where most people were illiterate the corrido brought news of victories and defeats on both sides of death, heroism and cowardliness ... and of non-revolutionary subjects, such as love and betrayal.
Mexico's Revolution Day is celebrated November 20. As such it is also, to a great extent, corrido day. For the corrido a narriative, particularly Mexican, musical form born in the 17th century was a kind of oral news magazine of the 1910 Revolution. In a land where most people were illiterate the corrido brought news of victories and defeats on both sides of death, heroism and cowardliness ... and of non-revolutionary subjects, such as love and betrayal. Corrido is popularly believed to come from the word, to run correr because it is a running ballad. The "Corrido de Benito Canales," for instance, runs 40 quatrains and "The Departure of the Gachupines" to 42. Other aficionados of the form hold that the term comes from the ocurido, happening, because most corridos are tales of what happened to Francisco Villa, or at "The Battles of Celaya," or to "Julian Ramirez." And with few exceptions, these are stirring occurrences.
"El domingo sostuvieron
la guerra por todo el dia
matandose unos con otros
con bastante valentia."
("On Sunday they sustained
The battle the whole day through
Killing each other
With great bravery.")
MEXICAN STORY TELLING
Vicente T. Mendoza, in "El Romance Español" y El Corrido Mexicano" says the corrido derives its epic form from the Spanish romance and jaraca (a literary genre), preserving their narrative description of heroic feats in battle and the jaraca's exaggerated emphasis on machismo. the development from these and other Spanish influences into the distinct corrido form took place beginning in the late 1600s and continued through most of the 1700s. The Mexican corrido tells its story in a distinct way, according to Gustavo Duran, "El improvisor popular does not distain one single detail, nor does he give major importance to the one or the other ... all elements obtain equal importance."
MEZTIZO POETRY
Serrano Martinez contends that the Mexican corrido is popular poetry freed from the rigid and learned patterns of Spanish poetry and by having been handed down orally and linked to Mexican historical and daily events. These Spanish forms became mestizo structures then, modified to accommodate the needs of a people newly converted to a western music form and a synergistic indio and español way of seeing the world.
Many students of Mexican music condiser "El Corrido de la Pulga" ("The Corrido of the Flea") by Pepe Quevedo the first "mature" Mexican corrido, with all the major lineaments taht would later distinguish all corrido: epic reach; multi-syllabic lines; strophic series of four to six lines in each verse, with different types of rhyme; narrative vigor; vivid specific detail.
"La Pulga" was published in 1821. Obviously there were corridos, well developed and popular, before then, since the songs were the newspapers of the illiterate and the poor (which were not always the same: while the poor were almost always illiterate, the illiterate were not always poor). Corridos most certainly were beging sung in one form or another possibly quite primitive during the 1810 War of Indepencence led by Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla.
WAR SOLIDIFIES FORM
But with the outbreak of the civil war in the mid-19th century, the corrido developed into a specific art form that has reigned, generally unchanged, ever since. "The course of Mexican history from about 1845 to the present can be traced by (published) corrido texts," according to one aficionado of the genre.
The religious and legal strife of Benito Juarez's Reform Period (1853-63) fostered thousands of corridos, as did the occupation of Mexico by French troops in 1863. The reign of Maximillian and his fall in 1867 was a time rich in corrido composition. the building of this country's railways gave birth to a new class of corrido; many of these were published in daily newspapers, not only because of their entertainment value, but because of the news they told. Then, in 1876, the songs of rebellion against the dictator Porfirio Diaz began appearing.
EARLY PUBLISHERSFOR A FEE
Mexico city publishing firms, such as Casa Wagner and Leven and the Imprenta de Murgia, began printing the texts of corridos in the first part of the 19th century, but without great enthusiasm. Corridos were considered by the wealthy as "trash" music, songs for the underclass. So the first editors of corridos, possibly the firm of Rivera e Hijos, demanded to be paid by the authors of the songs.
POSADA'S CORRIDO ART
Jose Guadalupe Posada moved to Mexico City form his birth place, Aguascalientes, in 1887. A fervent critic of Porfirio Diaz and all those who followed him, Posada created some 20,000 dramatic engravings expressing revolutionary views, many of them illustrations for rebellious corridos. His career as an illustrator one of Mexico's most talented and imaginative coincided with the golden age of the corrido mexicano.
The names of serveral professional corridistas have gone down in history, such as Samuel M. Lozano, possibly the most famous. Lozano was Pancho Villa's personal corridista. Even or especially during the fiercest fighting of the Revolution, corridistas passed along messages and news of the war. All successful leaders of military units of good size, whether of the central government or of the rebellion, employed such singers as spies. The corridistas were sent out on reconnaissance mission. Their task was to infiltrate enemy camps where they entertained officers and men while gathering information on troop size, armament, deployment, transportation capabilities, leadership and attack plans. They were paid according to the value of the information to their commanders. It was often a quite dangerous occupation and some corridistas obviously were double agents.
"Corrido" was the word the singers themselves used. On returning from their reconnaissance assignment, a corridista would ask whether his commanding officer was prepared ot pay of "de corrida o por parte." Corrido cost more, for the singer would present everything he learned in improvised verse form, usually. the message itself was called la bola.
The insturments they used were those most common in Mexico then: the small harp, the guitar, the vihuela and bass guitar. They were accustomed to working singly, but because traveling alone was dangerous, often two corridistas would join up and share an assignment.
RARE TODAY
Though true corridistas have become rare today, some sitll work the middle sized towns of Mexico and the barrios of larger cities. They usually have itchy feet and travel with their guitars to markets, fiestas of all kinds, patron saints day fiestivals, carnival celebrations, and Day of the Dead gatherings. Often called trovadores, they have enormous repertoires and are uncanny in the art of imporvisation. While text is improvised, the melodies are traditional. And of course there is no shortate of subjects today for corridos: murders, the economic crisis, accidents, thieving politicians, drug lords, fraudulent elections, martyrs of police brutality most of them veins of musical tradition that have been worked since the genre was bvorn. The corridistas, repertoire of course also includes ballads describing the places they've visted and circumstances they know well.
But Mexico's changing ways have transformed the corrido, extinguishing it as a true folk art. For literacy newspapers, magazines, books and electricity television, radios, record players and tapes have robbed the form of its value as a disseminator of news. Today, the corrido survives primarily as a "commercial" product, produced by well-known composers and performed on recordings by popular and well paid "artists."
The closest one usually can get to folk-art corridos is at some out-of-the-way pueblito during the fiesta of the village's patron saint, where you can ask a conjunto of mariachi's or a single singer-guitarist for such tales as "Siete Leguas" (Pancho Villas horse) or, even better, "Bonito San Juan del Rio," with lines that tremble with drama and contradition: "Palomita, con violencia ...." ("Little Dove, with violence ....").
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
