Today a significant part of daily life in Los Angeles reflects the rhythms of rural Mexico, and a defining moment in Mexican culture draws its power and force from what happens in California. … (p. 57) The talk is about banda music! George Lipsitz insisted on sponosoring this post, so here we go!
Banda music emerged as a subtle and significant register of the social dislocations engendered by the rapid mobility of capital and the mass migrations of low-wage workers across national borders in an age of hypermobile transnational capital. More than merely about music, the banda phenomenon served as the center of complex dynamics wherein identities appropriate to dramatically new political, economic, and social realities were in the process of being developed and deployed. Banda music and the practices attendant to it signaled a new cultural moment, one that challenged traditional categories of citizenship and culture on both side of U.S-Mexico border. New demographic and economic realities threw forth distinctive forms of social organization and style, of dance and dress, that spoke to the unique and singular conditions facing migrant low-wage workers in the United States. (p. 57)
Banda music in L.A. in 1990s was a collective community response to the social disapproval Mexicans experienced in the United States. Banda enabled them to celebrate their origins and flaunt their identities in the face of hate crimes and harsh policing, low-wage labor and unsafe working conditions. … Banda offered an area when Mexicanidad was honored, cherished, and prized. (p. 58)
Banda music uses mainly brass and woodwind instruments.
The lyrics of the banda songs that became popular in L.A. in the early 1990s only rarely addresses political or social issues. (p. 61) The most popular songs were the ones displayed by Banda Machos:
• Un Indio quiere llorar (The Indian Wants to Cry) – “about a man rejected by his lover’s wealthy and non-Indian family because of his humble background”
• Sangre de Indio (Blood of Indian) – about “the struggles of indigenous people, who make up a large proportion of the people in poverty in Mexico”
Banda artists preferred cowboy styles:
• Stetson hats (called Tejanos)
• fringed jackets
• leather boots
• jeans
Women dancers generally wore:
• tight-fitting jeans or western skirts
• belts with big buckles
• black stretch tops
• cowboy boots
Men dancers were dressed in:
• button-fly jeans
• fringed leather vests
• straw or felt cowboy hats
• shiny boots
Such clothing manifested the foreign and rural origins of many immigrants, turning what might have once seemed like a source of shame into a point of pride.
The titles of instrumental numbers and the lyrics of vocals in banda songs often referred to the rodeo or to the life on ranch. Dancers frequently carried a cuarto, a small horsewhip. (p. 63)
Banda music was one of the main factors that helped immigrants of Mexico to survive in the United States. The music transformed individuals into a community.
Clearly, banda music is not country but there are similarities. The most important of them is the community- creating function of such music. There emerges the question whether country/ banda create bonds that are later charished by the people or the bonded people create the music to have one more reason to stay togather. Or is it mutual?
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