Why You Need to Learn to Appreciate Mexican Regional Music
Developing a Valuable Social Skill in Mexico
You can’t fully love a country until you love its music. A country’s music is an expression of its culture, its worldview. In Mexico, you will find a great deal of Spanish-language music similar to American genres (alternative, ballads, hip hop) that you already enjoy. It would be easy to think that’s enough.
As an expat or new resident in Mexico however, you would be making a grave error by ignoring, discounting, or deriding Mexican regional music. If you do not engage in it at some level, you will be forever looking in from the outside. Regional music is an artery straight into the heart of the Mexican next to you.
For Mexicans, the experience of regional music is much like how people in the U.S. respond to American country music. In fact, several of my Mexican friends love American country music. Even without understanding the English lyrics, they recognize there’s a story being told there, and likely a painful one, as in their own regional music.
As a Mexican friend explained, “In a mariachi or banda song, the voices may be bad or the guitar slack-keyed but there’s something else in the honest wailing and genuine raw emotion of those regional renditions, especially as sung by Latin “machista” men. It’s like witnessing something you’re not supposed to see, a guy opening up.”
That “racket” you hear on a Mexican beach (regional music can include snare drums, tubas, and a whole array of brass) are in response to Mexicans’, often tourists themselves, requests to hear regional favorites they remember from childhood. In general, mariachi, banda, and ranchera songs are not “listening music.” Mexico is a group culture. Whether the songs are happy or sad, regional music is most enjoyed by groups at parties, events or while at dinner out together.
Type of Regional Music
You might as well lean in to this regional music, as resistance, you will come to find early on, is futile. Musicians will be playing ranchera, mariachi, and banda music in restaurants, on the beaches, in the plazuelas, and on many social occasions - events hopefully you will be invited to attend. My very best memories of Mexico have to do with engaging in regional music at Mexican Christmas posadas, weddings and birthday parties, or even being invited in to participate on a beach.
The Grammy awards have a special category for Mexican regional music, which falls under many sub-categories; norteño, banda, Duranguense, marimba, ranchera, Huapango, jalisciense, tejano, conjunto and of course mariachi. Of all the regional music styles, the newest is Latin trap, a meld of reggaeton and Southern hip hop originating in Puerto Rico. Mariachi is the oldest style, with a 400 year-old history.
Mariachi has been declared by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) as “Patrimonio Mundial de la Humanidad,” a special designation that the international agency gives to places, architecture, and in this case music, of special cultural significance. Regional music is folkloric in its roots, and over 100 years old. With centuries of this music singing in their veins, Mexicans feel it to their raizes (roots)
The U.S. Library of Congress National Recording Registry is a list of sound recordings that “are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States.” Ritchie Valens’ 1958 hit “La Bamba” was inducted to the list in 2019. The song introduced Mexican regional music to a wider American audience, blending the American rock of Valen’s youth with Mexican regional music sounds.
The Best Way to Enjoy Regional Music is to Join In!
Not long ago, a friend of mine in Denver talked me into taking salsa lessons. I doubt that I’d ever listened to salsa in my life. We attended the class several times a week. Over and over we would practice the same steps and try to pick up the three count beat in the songs. To dance to salsa, we were told, you have to hear that beat.
Learning to “hear” salsa, like any skill, takes time and practice. Developing an appreciation for a foreign country’s regional music likewise takes time in developing an ear. But like telling a joke well or ballroom dancing, taking time to learn something about a country’s regional music is worth the effort if spending time in any culture new to you.
On social occasions in Mexico when regional music is played, people often dance in circles. People of all ages are in those circles. No one is left out (and they can make it pretty hard to refuse). Once invited in, you will find yourself enjoying the unfamiliar music more and more. If you are a student of Spanish, there will be lyrics in the songs that you will come to love. Hopefully, there will be a few regional songs in Mexico that you will come to love too.
Songs You Might Try
Even before I caught on to the spirit of regional music, there were songs I liked. Morena de Corazon, which was featured in the opening scene of the movie Desperado was a “mariachi lite” song that warmed me up to the genre (I think it’s the yipping at the end of the song that kills me).
You might also try listening to mariachi performed with orchestras. El Huapango de Moncayo performed by the National Symphony of Mexico has received over four million views on YouTube. Younger, famous artists continue to revive songs for younger and new audiences. Natalia Lafourcade in particular has recorded a number of them, as has Christina Aguilera.
Corridas by definition are a subgenre of songs written for or about narcotics traffickers. If you think you could never like one, you have not heard the song Tuyo by Rodrigo Amarante that opens the Netflix series “Narcos.” As one reviewer put it, “The song is so seductive that when I played it to my dish washer, it laundered my money.”
The composition of this haunting song has a fascinating history. Before composing it, Amarante, a well-known musician in Chile, fully immersed himself in the series storyline, studying Pablo Escobar’s life and influences in-depth including his family life as a child. It’s not much of a stretch to say the opening song set the tone for the entire series (the ballad is based on a mother singing to her son).
Most beloved Mexican regional songs
Mariachi
El Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan
Mexico Lindo y Querido
El Rey
Ella
El Son de La Negra
El Huapango de Moncayo
La Bikina
Ranchero
Ella - José Alfredo Jimenez
Mexico Lindo y Querido - Jorge Negrete
Bolero
Cien Años
Jurame
Contigo en la distancia - (Christina Aguilera -
Si nos dejan - Luis Miguel
Vicente Fernandez - Volver, volver, volver, Por Tu Maldito Amor, No Volveré - Vicente Fernandez
Como quien pierde una estrella - Alejandro Fernandez
Banda
Que Falta me hace mi padre, Triste Recuerdo, Mi Gusto Es - Antonio Aguilar
El Manicero
El Toro Mambo
El Corrido de Mazatlan
Bésame Mucho - Luis Miguel
Maria Bonita - by Natalie Lafourcade
[Pretty much anything by Agustin Lara, or Jose Alfredo Jimenez. Natalia Lafourcade has produced an album of Agustin Lara covers]
Related links:
For an education on the history, instruments, and clothing of Mariachi, here is good blog by Transparent Languages
Best date night songs in Spanish (with audio) - Ventanas Mexico
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About the author:
Kerry Baker is the author of several books. “If Only I Had a Place” is your guide to renting long-term in Mexico (it is different, regardless of what realtors would like you to believe). Most recently, she wrote “The Mexico Solution: Saving your money, sanity, and quality of life through part-time life in Mexico.”