This Banda Stuff Is Nuts

[JSngry]

If you live in a region with a variety of Mexican-American programming, is this stuff on the air there? We have a station that plays it 24/7, and I confess to not being able to tune out once I tune in.

[JSngry]

[JSngry]

[Buddha the Magnificent]

I spent a little time in Houston about 15 years ago and got to really liking that sort of stuff. It was the best stuff I could find on the rental car radio, by far. There wasn't much tejano music back here in Georgia at the time, although that may have changed in the ATL by now due to shifting demographics. ¡Me gusta!

[mikelz777]

I kinda got hooked on it when having lunch at a Mexican restaurant where they always had this type of music playing. It got me to wondering why it seemed to have many of the same elements as polka music. I looked into it a bit and as it turns out, way back in the day, there were a lot of Czech and German immigrants who settled along the U.S. and Mexican border. Inevitably, the cultures mixed and one of the results was this type of music.

Edited November 1, 2014 by mikelz777

[.:.impossible]

Hombres! I heard a live male vocal version of this in a Mexican restaurant a few weeks back. Can't find it, but this is closest with brass band. Sounds like the same arrangement.

Listen to Y Sigues Siendo Tu

Yesenia La Gitana

[Shawn]

I run lights, sound and video for Mexican parties frequently, the DJs are always playing this stuff. After several hours I want to run screaming from the room.

[catesta]

It can be catchy sometimes and entertaining under the right circumstances while at the right place, but for the most part it all sounds like the same few songs with minor tweaks here and there, slow or fast.

[JSngry]

I've been hearing this general type of thing for what seems like forever, since the mid-70s, easily. And the records have alwyas, always sounded the same, the instrumentation, the arrangements, everything. It was about as absolutist a traditional form as you could find anywhere.

But these recent records, they are very different, the songs sound the same, but the arrangements, instrumentation...this is something different, there's a certain, for lack of a better term, "post-modern" thing going on. How/when it happened, I don't know, becuase I don't really follow this music, I just hear it while scanning the dial, listening to cars drive by, etc. But this new sound, I just really heard it last weekend, and it caught my attention immediately. At first I though it was a joke record, but then they all had this same basic production going on, and I said, wow, something's going on here!

Also recently learned that there is a thing called "Narcocorrida", which has been around for decades, but which has been gaining popularity in the US as a parallel to Gangsta Rap lyrically. All about the grisly realities of the drug-smuggling biz on both sides of the border. What effect, if any, all that is having on the music I haven't a clue, but something is happening.

I really should get my Spanish together once and for all.