AUTHOR TAKES SERIOUS LOOK AT MEXICAN OUTLAW BALLADS

It's perfectly understandable that San Jose might be leery of embracing its
role in history as the birthplace of the narcocorrido, the Mexican ballad
genre that chronicles the exploits of outlaws, gunmen and drug traffickers.

But after you read Elijah Wald's fascinating new book, "Narcocorrido: A
Journey Into the Music of Drugs, Guns and Guerrillas" (Rayo, $24), that
connection might seem less a source of notoriety than a significant
cultural milestone.

Wald traces the genesis of the narcocorrido to 1972, when a group of
teenage brothers, Los Tigres del Norte, recorded "Contrabando y Traicion"
("Smuggling and Betrayal") shortly after moving from the western Mexican
state of Sinaloa to San Jose. The song, about the ill-fated marijuana
smuggling trip of Emilio Varela and "Camelia la Texana" turned Los Tigres
into enduring ranchera superstars and inspired two sequel tunes and three
movies.

Over the ensuing decades, the polka-driven, accordion-based music has
become a powerful transnational force, selling millions of albums across
the western United States and Latin America, inspiring fashion trends and
spawning an entire universe of stars, such as Luis y Julian, Grupo
Exterminador, El As de la Sierra, Jenni Rivera and, most important, Chalino
Sanchez. The latter had achieved legendary status before he was killed
execution-style in the Sinaloan capital of Culiacan in 1992.

A veteran musician and cultural journalist, Wald hitchhiked across Mexico
with his guitar, interviewing the genre's leading performers and
songwriters. In most cases, it was the first time they had been asked
detailed questions about their music. He also spent time doing research and
interviews in south Texas, Chiapas and Los Angeles, where many of the
record labels and narcocorrido stars are now based. The result is an
incisive, unprecedented and often enthralling history of a hugely popular
musical style that has thrived in the face of class prejudice, a widespread
radio ban in western Mexico and scorn for its association with drug
trafficking.

Wald is making the rounds of Bay Area bookstores this month for a series of
talks on narcocorridos, including appearances tonight at Black Oak Books in
Berkeley, on Wednesday at City Lights in San Francisco, on Friday at the
Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco and on May 17 at the Mexican
Heritage Plaza in San Jose.

"You have to draw an analogy to other kinds of music in the U.S.," Wald
says. "There's no interview with Hank Williams. Sam Cooke and Otis Redding
both died without ever being interviewed. The idea that anybody would
interview a working-class pop musician didn't occur to anyone until more or
less the late '60s. There are lots of books on Mexican classical composers,
on film stars, on more 'respectable' music, but this is country music.

"In L.A. by now, that's sort of turned around, but in Mexico I'm having
problems trying to find a publisher. And frankly, we'll go to these
publishers, and they'll take one look at the book and say, 'Why would we
put this out? Those people don't read.' "

Though the rise of narcocorridos has sparked a wave of hand-wringing
articles about the music's dire influence on impressionable youngsters,
Wald is quick to point out that there's a direct connection between
contemporary narcocorridos and corridos celebrating Prohibition-era
smugglers and Mexican revolutionaries such as Pancho Villa. The music's
roots go back even further, to 19th-century cowboy ballads and the romantic
songs of medieval Spanish troubadours.

But the music that contemporary narcocorridos are most often compared to is
gangsta rap, the hip-hop style detailing the hard-boiled street life of
drug dealers that emerged from tough Southern California neighborhoods. The
genres began to converge in the person of Chalino, an authentic gunman
whose popularity transformed narcocorridos from a country style into urban
music. While Chicanos and Mexicans living in California once listened to
narcocorridos as an expression of Mexican cultural pride, the rise of Los
Angeles-based narcocorridistas, mostly Chalino-influenced singers known as
Chalinitos, has turned the style into an expression of urban identity.

"What's happening as the L.A. guys take off is that Los Angeles is becoming
the focus of the corrido scene, and kids in Arizona, New Mexico and
Michoacan are starting to listen to this as the music of L.A., rather than
Mexico," Wald says. "Now there are kids buying Lupillo Rivera CDs because
it's the hot L.A. thing, which is exactly the reverse of the people who
started buying Chalino, because this is the real sound of the Mexican hills."

Elijah Wald

Author of "Narcocorrido: A Journey Into the Music of Drugs, Guns and
Guerrillas"

7:30 tonight Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, (510) 665-5606

7 p.m. Wednesday City Lights Booksellers, 261 Columbus Ave., San Francisco,
(415) 362-8193

8 p.m. Friday Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission St. San Francisco,
(415) 821-1155

7 p.m. May 17 Pavilion, Mexican Heritage Plaza, 1700 Alum Rock Ave., San
Jose, $3, (408) 928-5500