Bay Area Musicians Discuss How Corridos Are Connecting New Generations Across Cultures

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Oakland artist DELACiiO’s latest EP features a corrido titled “R94,” which tells the story of a teenager who hustles to make money, only to find himself in trouble.

One verse contains the following lyrics in Spanish: “En las calles de East Oakland / Yo me he ganado el respeto / Muchos dan la mano /Pero te ponen el dedo (But they snitch on you).” In English, it translates to: “On the streets of East Oakland / I have earned respect / Many shake your hand / But they snitch on you.”

The song is one of many corridos that have come out of the Bay Area music scene since the 1960s. Corridos are a type of a narrative ballad — a song that tells a story — that is one of the most cherished traditions within the genre of Mexican regional music.

The 28-year-old DELACiiO, whose actual name is Ignacio Lopez Jr., started rapping as a teenager but changed gears to Mexican music.

“Once I started dabbling with corridos, it was just something super fun, natural and organic because I was writing what was going on around me in my neighborhood and in Oakland where I’m from,” he said.

I wanted to know more about how corridos have evolved and why younger generations think they are cool, so I talked to three Bay Area musicians who have recorded corridos, as well as a UC Berkeley professor who studies corridos as a tool for teaching literacy to young people.

“The corrido, as it emerged in the late 1800s in Northern Mexico, was really a type of oral tradition, oral storytelling and story sharing,” said San Francisco artist La Doña, whose real name is Cecilia Peña-Govea. La Doña, 32, grew up listening to and performing corridos with her family’s band.

“A big role of art, especially during times of social upheaval, is to witness and to document,” she said. “One of my favorite things about corridos is that it takes you into a time and place, a moment in that story.”

Twenty years ago, Cati de los Ríos taught high school in Southern California to students who were mostly immigrants or children of immigrants who spoke Spanish at home. Schools, she said, often treated those students as if they hadn’t been exposed to literature or literary traditions, when in fact many of them were voracious consumers of corridos. She saw an opportunity to use corridos to teach literature and storytelling.

“I was so thirsty for materials,” to use in classrooms, she said. She created them through academic research, earning a doctorate from Columbia University. She now teaches courses on literacy and multilingual education at UC Berkeley.

“I felt this desire to enter the world of teacher education, get my PhD, and prepare future teachers to not just acknowledge these literacy practices, but sanction them as a legitimate academic practice,” she said.

Hernan Hernandez Jr. is the lead singer of the Bay Area band Suenatron, which blends a variety of musical genres from cumbia to norteño. The band plans to release a corrido later this year, titled “El Robo,” about a son who turns to crime to pay for his ailing mother’s medical care. Another song, “Bienvenidos,” explores the kinds of welcomes immigrants receive when they arrive in the U.S.

Hernandez grew up immersed in corridos, especially those popularized by his father’s group, Los Tigres Del Norte, a legendary band that formed in San José in the late 1960s. Some of Los Tigres’ biggest hits include “Contrabando Y Traición,” a story about a scorned woman who takes revenge, and “La Jaula de Oro,” about a man who feels trapped in the United States after his children assimilate.

“When I was a kid, I would see people bumping rap songs; now I see young kids bumping corridos. When I was a kid, people were embarrassed to talk about corridos,” said Hernandez, 45. “I like how corridos have evolved and how they are becoming something new and fresh. This younger generation in the United States, that’s how they connect with the culture, through food or art or music.”

DELACiiO agrees that there was a time when corridos were seen as music for family parties and parents.

“I compare corridos to reggaetón. Reggaetón had to break the walls and the barriers to get a worldwide platform and be accepted by everybody,” he said. “I feel like corrido is doing the same thing. You have artists like Natanael Cano and Peso Pluma that cross boundaries.”

Cano and Peso Pluma are known for corridos tumbados, a fusion of American hip-hop and trap music with Mexican norteño and banda rhythms.

“This music slaps with everybody, right?” de los Ríos said. “When I am doing some research in the East Bay at different high schools, and I hear Southeast Asian kids blasting Peso Pluma, I hear African-American kids blasting Peso Pluma. The horn-driven sound, the accordion, the acoustic guitars — that sound really speaks to a lot of young people in different ways.

“But I’m also seeing for the first time a lot kids saying like, ‘Wow, my culture is at the center for once.’”

De los Ríos said that while corridos are a valuable art form, some go beyond telling a story to condoning and glorifying misogyny, crime and violence. The current president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, recently called for an investigation of a musical group that displayed the photo of a notorious cartel leader during a concert.

On the other hand, corridos, de los Ríos said, have also been a powerful tool for challenging authority.

“My favorite corrido that I’ve written is called ‘Corrido Palestina,’ and it’s about the genocide happening in Palestine, and it really takes to heart that role of truth telling, witnessing and documenting,” said La Doña.

The song talks calls for a cease fire and ends with “Viva Palestina.” After she released the song last fall, blowback was swift from supporters of Israel.

“I’ve lost a lot of gigs. I have lost performance opportunities. I have lost contact with certain people in the industry. It has definitely been felt financially, spiritually, and in a lot of ways,” she said. “I expected it, and it’s been difficult, but it’s also not a surprise.”

The fact that the song received pushback demonstrates the power of corridos today, La Doña said. She hopes young artists continue producing corridos and reinventing the art form.

“Representation of any type of Latinx stories is really important within the pop culture canon,” she said. “I also see a lot of opportunity for diversifying narratives like having more female stories, having more queer stories, having like a lot of different experiences being reflected in a genre that’s typically been very machista, male-dominated and patriarchal.”