B&N Community

Users
Thread Options

Narco Corridos and Murder Ballads

by Jedidiah-Ayres 08:33 AM
In The Jaguar, the latest Charlie Hood title from T. Jefferson Parker, Charlie goes on a bloody tour of Mexico to deliver a million dollar ransom for Erin McKenna, the lovely musician wife of bent L.A. County Sheriff Bradley Jones. About half the action belongs to Charlie as he presses on against the savages of human nature and uh, nature nature, but the other half of the book belongs to Erin and her ordeal in captivity and the evolution of her relationship to the cartel boss who holds her prisoner (with the threat of skinning his pregnant hostage alive if Charlie don't deliver) in an old castle in the jungle.

 

Turns out it's no accident that Erin was taken, her captor is a passionate fan and he has plans for her time in captivity - including coercing her into performing at an exclusive, swanky venue and even writing and recording some original material for him. Money he's got, but he's a collector. He wants the precious, rare and unique. He'd especially like her to write and record a narco corrido to immortalize him. 

 

And I don't blame him.

 

The narco corrido is a folk ballad recounting the lives, deaths and exploits of drug lords (check out the work of a band like Los Cuates De Sinaloa for examples - I don't really do it justice), creating legends of the living and the recently so. As a tool of propaganda, pop-journalism or personal mythologizing they really can't be beat. And while the narco corrido is a relatively recent development (20th century) and usually based on real people (if exaggerated for myth building), the tradition of celebrating outlaws and crime in popular music is as old as... music, and still popular - I'm not going to embarrass myself with trying to reference a good gangster rap example, but hey, just try to refute its place in the tradition, its cultural relevance or popularity. Or jeez, how 'bout Take the Money and Run by The Steve Miller Band or Bobby Darin's hit take on Kurt Weill's Die Moritat von Mackie Messer (Mack the Knife) or The Night the Lights Went out in Georgia by Vicki Lawrence?

 

Some of my personal favorites I've been obsessing over lately include: The Devil You Know by Todd Snider, Choctaw Bingo byJames McMurtry, Things That Scare Me by Neko Case, Carolina Drama by The Raconteurs, Gun Street Girl by Tom Waits, and the entire album Murder Ballads by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Ten songs that all end the same way. Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska is one after another of these crime and desperation stories from the title track based on the life of killer Charles Starkweather (who was also the inspiration for Terrence Malick's fan-effing-tastic debut Badlands) to Highway Patrolman which in turn inspired Sean Penn's directorial debut The Indian Runner. Over at my blog Hardboiled Wonderland I used to run a guest-written series of essays about crime songs and Craig McDonald wrote this great little piece on Highway Patrolman.

 

I'll link to some of the stand-out entries here: 

 

Patrick Shawn Bagley on Robert Earl Keen's The Road Goes on Forever.

Steve Weddle on Bob Dylan's Brownsville Girl.

Kent Gowran on Richard Thompson's 1952 Vincent Black Lightning.

Paul D. Brazill on Randy Newman's In Germany Before the War.

 

I'm always looking for more great narrative music, murder ballads, narcocorridos or other. What're your favorites?

 

Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.

Post a comment
0 Kudos

Advertisement

Categories