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LITR 5731 Seminar in
Sample Student
research project Fall
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Trina Silva
Corridos:
Passing and Learning Mexican-American History through Song
Growing up in a
Mexican-American household, hearing Spanish language and Spanish music on a
daily basis was not unusual or foreign to me. I grew up going to church and
singing what I knew of as “corridos,”
but I had no notion of the cultural importance or historical value of
corridos
until recently while researching this topic.
Oral tradition
has long been a method of passing along history. Most are familiar with the oral
traditions of epic poems, such as
Beowulf (between the 8th-11th
centuries) and the Homeric poems (7th
century BC).
Like epic poems,
corridos tie people to history as well as their
family and roots.
Traditional
corridos
tell stories of star-crossed lovers, famous heroes, the Mexican frontier,
tragic deaths, war and many other actual events and subjects considered
important to the Mexican heritage. The art of writing and performing
corridos
continues in modern-day Mexican and Mexican-American communities. In this
research post I focus mainly on an overview of traditional
corridos
and in my second posting I will focus on modern-day
corridos.
In order to
understand the significance of
corridos in the Mexican
community it is important to define them.
Corridos are folk ballads: descriptive
narratives that are written in poetic form and set to simple music that often
have a moral. They
have been a part of the Mexican oral tradition
for decades and have been traced back to the mid-1800s but were popularized
during the Mexican Revolution (Sjoberg,
10). According to Juan Díes, a Mexican-American
folklorist and ethnomusicologist, a
corrido is “…basically,
a musical news story”; however, he believes that in order to make the cut as a
corrido
someone has to die.
Many people argue with Díes's opinion that someone must die in order to be considered a
corrido
(NYTimes.com,
Article: Far From Home). Personally, I do not
believe a
corrido has to include tragedy in order to be
considered authentic as long as it is telling a story of an event or person.
Certain elements are important in a
corridor; for instance, the singer
usually addresses the public in the beginning or the end of song (Diaz, 16), and
the song is sung in common vernacular because it is intended to be heard,
understood, and remembered by the common working-class people of the land,
referred to as “el pueblo” (Sjoberg,
10).
·
36 lines (6 stanzas of 6
lines or 9 stanzas of 4 lines)
·
7-10 syllables per line
(lines can be repeated)
·
Rhyme scheme (ABCBDB form
in 6 line stanza, ABCB in 4 line stanza, sometimes couplets are used: AABB)
·
Traditionally, the 1st
stanza provides a setting by giving either a date or place
While analyzing
the corrido,
Historia y Muerte del General Francisco Villa
(see links below),
I found that it did not follow the structure
indicated by Kennedy-Center.org. Instead, the
corrido
contains 16 stanzas of four lines each with an ABAB rhyme
scheme. The
corrido does, however, give a setting in the
first stanza and addresses the working class.
There is an
abundance of things to talk about with
corridos: themes, the
musicians, the structure, the argument of what qualifies as a true
corrido
or not.
This research post is just a glimpse of what a
corrido
is and what some consider a genuine
corrido
to be structured like. In the next posting I will discuss how the
corrido
has evolved and how the tradition is being kept alive.
Youtube video of un
corrido, Historia y Muerte de Pancho Villa Part 1
Youtube video of un corrido, Historia y Muerte de Pancho Villa Part 2
Lyrics of Historia y Muerte del General Francisco Villa in Spanish and English
Bibliography
1.
Sjoberg, Frances,
Fernandez, Dr. Celestino & Alvarez, Dr. Maribel,
A Decade of Young Corridistas.
http://poetry.arizona.edu/sites/poetry.arizona.edu/files/CorridoBook_FINAL_outlined.pdf
2.
Diaz Roig, Mercedes, “The
Traditional Romancero in Mexico: Panorama.”
http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/2ii-iii/10_roig.pdf
4.
Far From Home, Mexicans
Sing Age-Old Ballads of a New Life
5.
Corridos Sin Fronteras
http://www.corridos.org/Default.asp?Language=E
