Changed Tunes

Pedro Rivera, L.A.’s king of narco-corridos, feels ashamed when he surveys what’s become of the controversial genre he helped make so popular during the past decade.

The amicable and industrious immigrant amassed a small family fortune producing records about drug-running, killing and corruption on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. And he cultivated a dynasty of “narquillos” in two of his sons, including L.A.’s only living narco-singer-turned-superstar, Lupillo Rivera.

But now, says the musical patriarch, people are sick of the same old songs and story lines. Instant narco-singers have cropped up like poppies in every barrio, he feels, and they all say they’re from Sinaloa, the state notorious for brassy bands and brash cartels. Armchair narco-composers write songs about drug lords they never met involved in escapades so improbable they belong in comic books, not corridos, or narrative songs.

What’s more, Rivera laments, some corrido-style songs are now sullied with crude and vulgar lyrics too shocking for most decent bordellos.

“Nowadays, there’s so many fly-by-night labels putting out fantasy corridos, that I’m ashamed to go to market with my records,” says Rivera, who owns Long Beach-based Cintas Acuario music label. “The whole thing has really been ruined.”

Rivera’s downbeat business assessment reflects a significant shift in corrido music, a lucrative niche within the Mexican music market. Today, it seems, the star veterans of narco-corridos want to distance themselves from the subgenre that helped propel them to prominence. Even Los Tigres del Norte, the recognized pioneers of the modern narco-corrido who perform tonight at the L.A. Sports Arena, are worried about the degeneration of the genre they helped create.

The rush for a quick buck, say artists and students of the scene, has cheapened the historic Mexican song form, once so literary and true-to-life it served as the musical newspaper of the masses. Though the narco-corrido has survived public displeasure and outright government censorship in Mexico, its ascent has finally been arrested by that old entertainment bugaboo--overexposure and excessive exploitation.

“It may be that the period of narco-corridos has come to an end,” says UCLA Spanish professor and corrido expert Guillermo Hernandez. “The new corridos aren’t going anywhere. You don’t have any memorable ones now. They’re just here today and gone tomorrow.”

Although corridos have been popular for more than a century and can be about any topic, the fabled narco-corrido about drug smuggling emerged as a powerful force over the past three decades. The tales of derring-do and death made international stars of California-based artists such as the Riveras, San Jose’s Los Tigres and L.A.’s Chalino Sanchez, the gunslinging narco-icon murdered in 1992 after a show in Sinaloa.

Recently, though, top corrido acts have all backed away from the genre on their latest albums.

Tigres now lean more toward songs with a social conscience. Los Tucanes de Tijuana, another top corrido act, have a surprise bestseller with a compilation album of their old love songs.

And Lupillo Rivera, who has steadily steered away from gangster origins as a strategy to reach a wider audience, now favors traditional Mexican tunes. The shaven-headed idol is now recording the syrupy “Amorcito Corazon” (Little Love of My Heart), the Pedro Infante classic scheduled for his next album.

Besides, say the musicians, there hasn’t been much narco-news lately. The only recent big story with corrido potential is last month’s killing by Mexican police of Ramon Arellano Felix, enforcer of the notorious Tijuana drug cartel, and the subsequent capture of his brother, Benjamin.

Lupillo and his father are already working on a corrido on that topic. But for his next album in the genre, the younger Rivera plans to return to traditional themes--horses and revolutionary heroes.

Into this corrido vacuum has rushed a new style of aggressive music--the shocking put-down song. Lesser known norteno acts have found sudden popularity by insulting each other with profane, crude and sexually explicit lyrics.

The dissing matches are now the new rage among a certain rowdy segment of L.A.’s corrido crowd, the hoi polloi counterpart to professional wrestling fans. A battle of the bands between two heavyweights in this style--Los Originales de San Juan and their rivals Los Razos--deteriorated into a bottle-throwing mob scene at a sold-out, open-air concert in El Monte Sunday.

Strictly speaking, these X-rated song duels are not really corridos, a genre that usually involves a brave or heroic figure in a tragic confrontation with powers that be. But since corrido bands are now engaged in the crass blasts, more respectable groups fear being tarred by association.

“These other colleagues have come out and have degraded the drama,” says Tigres leader Jorge Hernandez. “So we don’t want to follow that game. Because instead of helping the industry, they hurt it by making things up and using bad language.”

The foulmouthed newcomers are no Sex Pistols or N.W.A brimming with youthful outrage and rebellion. They’re middle-aged, beer-bellied men who call each other “Mummy” and “Monkey Face.”

Still, some observers see a rap parallel.

“The whole L.A. corrido scene to a large extent has been a Mexican analog to the gangster rap world,” says writer and musician Elijah Wald, author of a recent book about the narco-corrido. “Now you have groups cursing each other and their fans getting into fights, which is exactly where the gangster rap world went.”

And that’s exactly where Los Tigres refuse to go.

The quintet has an extra reason to clean up its act: They have emerged as political spokesmen for the immigrant community, especially the millions of workers who entered the country illegally, as did they themselves in the 1960s.

The group built its recording and film career with early narco-hits like “Contrabando y Traicion” (Contraband and Betrayal), about the exploits of a borderland Bonnie and Clyde.

But don’t expect any of the group’s famous drug-smuggling sagas to show up on its official playlist for tonight’s concert, billed as “El Baile de los Trabajadores,” the Workers’ Dance. Sponsored by community organizations and endorsed by the Catholic Church, the event is part of an effort to persuade Congress to legalize immigrant workers with a new amnesty for the undocumented.

Narco-corridos are the antithesis of the image promoters want to project from the Sports Arena.

At a press conference with Los Tigres earlier this month, a bishop, a labor leader and a pair of workers stressed that the immigrant community is hard-working and law-abiding. That’s hardly the picture conveyed by Tigres tunes about Mexicans smuggling marijuana across the border hidden in the tires of their cars.

To be fair, Los Tigres have always written songs about the travails of average immigrants who are looking for a better life, not a life of crime. Those are the songs they plan to highlight tonight, though they won’t turn down requests for fans’ narco-favorites.

“We’re like a newspaper, but in song,” says the Tigres’ Jorge Hernandez. “And just like a newspaper, we must tell the good and the bad about things that happen in this country to our undocumented friends. This makes people wake up, but we must always tell the truth.”

The truth about the drug trade doesn’t have to be offensive, the artists say. The stories can be told as cautionary tales with metaphors rather than explicit lyrics.

“El corrido es cultura,” says Mario Quintero of Los Tucanes. “The corrido is culture. And it should be for the whole family, including the children who come to our shows. What they see in their idols is what they’re going to learn. So as human beings, we need to be more responsible.”

At one time, Mexicans viewed the drug trade as a problem for Americans, says UCLA’s Hernandez. Mexicans saw themselves as drug suppliers, but all the consumers lived north of the border. Once drug use started creeping into Mexican families, he says, the public’s appetite for narco-corridos started eroding. “Drugs are a real problem in Mexico now, so the consequences of the drug traffic are not passed on lightly,” says Hernandez, who has organized four international conferences on the corrido. “Mexicans are starting to feel the repercussions of the drug trade in their own lack of security and safety.”

The drug problem hit home for Pedro Rivera when his son Juan was admitted to a drug treatment program, at 16. The young man later recounted his experience in a corrido called “Soy Malandrin” (I’m a Scoundrel), which was recorded by Los Razos, the band the elder Rivera now disdains.

Today, with his father’s encouragement, Juan is also rising above the artistic straights of the narco-corrido. Now 24 and a father of three, he has a Sony album coming out that will reflect the more normal concerns of youth, and the joy of traditional songs like “La Bamba.”

“It’ll have a very different vibe from the life he led before,” says his father. “We suffered very much over our son, but we pulled him out of that lifestyle.”

One good thing came of the family’s pain, says the elder Rivera: “A very real corrido.”