Outlaw Music: Mexico’s Narcocorridos

While the stiflingly hot air condenses on the glass mugs of cold beer in a beachside bar, young men watch a music video on a television. The theme is familiar: musicians wearing flashy clothes strut in front of expensive sports cars while barely clothed women dance between them. A thumping beat backs a vocal track boasting of success in the drug trade, sexual prowess and towering stacks of currency from illegal enterprises. Then the accordion player begins a dazzling solo while two tuba players dance to a polka rhythm in the background. No, this isn’t a rap video the young men are captivated by, it’s a Narcocorrido song by Gerardo Ortiz, a 27-year-old native of Pasadena, Calif., who has emerged as one of the shining stars of Mexican Norteño music.

With songs glorifying real-life drug lords like El Chapo Guzman in the Grammy-nominated hit El Primer Ministro (The Prime Minister), Ortiz continued a long tradition of musical hagiographies ranging from the early 1970s songs of Los Tigres del Norte followed by Los Tucanes de Tijuana and others, exclaiming the supposed generosity of drug runners to local communities lamenting the violent deaths of drug lords and bodyguards.

As with other styles of outlaw music, the Narcocorrido has become popular amongst the traffickers themselves, with individuals and groups commissioning songs about not only fallen compatriots and their gangs, but also the bosses themselves. Top hitmen like Mayo Zambada, Gonzalo Inzunza and “El Señor de los Cielos,” or “The Lord of the Skies” himself, Amado

Carillo have all reportedly expressed the fondness for the songs celebrating their lifestyles and excoriating the authorities and rival cartels that come gunning for them carrying their cuervos de chivos (goat’s horns), an euphemism for AK-47 assault rifles.

Whether you like the idea or not, if you’re traveling through Mexico in the near future, you’ll be hearing of their exploits.