The ensembles that accompany narco-balladeers Masculinity-the lyrical expression and the overall musical sound areĭrastically different (Simonett 2006). The topics of violence, illegal activities, physical prowess, and There are certainly some thematic parallels between these two genres-such as Where narcocorrido fans have very little exposure to hardcore rap music. This kind of comparison does not apply in Mexico, Rap, specifically, but it’s the same audience” (interview with Walroth 2002, Wald, narcocorridos occupy “not just a kind of equivalent terrain to gangsta Perspective, journalist Elijah Wald compares the narcocorrido to gangsta rap, calling one of its key figures in LosĪngeles, Chalino Sánchez, “the Tupac Shakur of narcocorridos.” According to Moreover, today’s censorship of narcocorridos criminalizes artistic expressions as a preventive strategy to combat criminal activities related to drug trafficking. However, unlike the demonizing of popular music genres with roots in African or African diaspora culture, the banning of narcocorridos was not related to structures of racial oppression (Rivera 2009, 121): narcocorrido opponents’ moral concerns were based on class distinctions. While in the United States these measures were geared specifically towards the genres of rock and rap music, laws to regulate popular music in Mexico targeted the then-emerging narcocorrido genre, a type of ballad that cherishes the lifestyle of drug traffickers (Astorga 2005). government intervened directly in the distribution of popular music, holding hearings in Congress on the matter of music lyrics (Chastagner 1999). At the time of publication of Fiske’s book, certain types of popular music had become the target of censorship, in the United States and elsewhere (Jones 1991).
His insightful analysis of the diverse ways in which people use and subvert commodities to create their own meanings and messages remains equally relevant today, when music has become a streamed product easily accessible to the public at large.
Over 30 years ago, John Fiske argued in his classic book Understanding Popular Culture (1989) that “popular culture is made by the people at the interface between the products of the culture industries and everyday life” (2011, 21).
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