Music: By the People, For the People

Monday, 16 November 2009 03:31

Music that is by the people, but also for the people.

This is not your typical Top 40 music or the music that you will hear on popular radio, and it most certainly is not the music that will reach #1 Billboard status, but this kind of music is of deeper meaning. 

"Corridos" are a form of music that in popular culture would be considered ballads. Corridos are a Mexican creation based on a Spanish form.

Dr. Celestino Fernandez, a sociology professor at the University of Arizona has collected and researched corridos since the 1980's.

"I started to collect them, because my father played them over and over," Fernandez said.

"I related personally to the songs, that's why I aslo started to collect them," Fernandez said.

Fernandez has several hundred corridos, ranging from long playing record albums (LP's), 45's, cassettes, and cd's.  The corridos that Fernandez has collected, are mostly from Mexico.

The word corrido comes from the verb "run," and although they may be considered a ballad in popular culture, corridos  are more like a poem in a musical form, a story or even a narrative.

There are eight syllables in a line, and every other line rhymes in the corrido. 

Fernandez said that corridos can be traced back as far as the mid-late 1800's.

The differnece between a corrido and a song that you may hear today is that corridos are truly made for the community and based on a level of realness.

"The social meaning of corridos is that they are by the people, for the people," Fernandez said. 

"The main difference is corridos are based in fact, they are told as a story documenting events, and they are documenting and instilling stories based on real occurences," Fernandez said.

Corridos can range from a variety of topics, like natural disasters, The Mexican Revolution, drug smuggling, hometowns, regions, humorous situations and relationships, to name a few.  The biggest and most popular topic that is written about is immigration.

Corridos seem more than just Mexican ballads, they are more like a bond between the culture and community. 

"The corridos are common culture because this is the music of the people and the people are in the streets, plazas, and house parties," Fernandez said.

"They aren't for the elite, they are for the masses," Fernandez said.

Fernandez has also composed a few corridos. 

"El Corrido de Manuel Pacheco" was one of the first corridos Fernandez composed, for the former University of Arizona President, Manuel Pacheco, when he first arrived at the university.  Fernandez composed another corrido when Pacheco left the university, and another when Pacheco was invited back to the univeristy for the opening of The Integrated Learning Center (ILC) on the university's campus. One of his corridos also premiered in downtown Tucson. 

Unlike your typical Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, or 'N SYNC songs, corridos will never go out of style.

"Corridos will continue to be composed as long as people keep moving," Fernandez said.

With all that being said, I got a little inspiration to write something of my own.  By all means I am no Selena, but have a listen anyways. 

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Written by Tierra Prewitt You are reading Music: By the People, For the People articles