narcocorridos and the murders of mexican folk singers

Mexican Singer Found Tortured, Shot

By LUIS PEREZ – Feb 20, 2008

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — A singer and two members of his staff were found tortured and killed just south of the California border, apparently the latest victims in a string of slayings of Mexican musicians, state prosecutors said Wednesday.

Jesus Rey David Alfaro Pulido, 26, known as "El Gallito," was found strangled and shot in the head last week in Tijuana, said a spokeswoman for the Baja California attorney general's office who wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the matter. His body was apparently frozen, the spokeswoman said.

Reports had first emerged of the deaths of Alfaro, manager Israel Flores, and his assistant, Jose Guadalupe Topete on Friday. Prosecutors confirmed the deaths on Wednesday.

The killings may have been linked to three others in Tijuana last week, including that of a municipal police officer, the attorney general's office said in a statement.

Many of the bodies bore signs of torture and were left with written notes common in execution-style killings. No arrests have been made in the killings.

Alfaro was the latest Mexican musician killed in a string of murders that include the December death of Sergio Gomez, lead performer for the top-selling group K-Paz de la Sierra, and the November 2006 slaying of Valentin Elizalde.

Some of the dead were singers of so-called "narcocorridos," or drug ballads.

Alfaro mostly sang accordion-based music associated with northern Mexico variously known as "banda" or "grupero" at Tijuana nightclubs. He never made a recording. But he gained local fame for covering some of Elizalde's most famous songs.

Also Wednesday, Mexican authorities said a bus belonging to the grupero band Pesado crashed on a road in Puebla state after its driver fell asleep.

A member of the band's staff was killed and another seriously injured in the Monday night crash, police said. Band members suffered only minor injuries.

Associated Press writers Istra Pacheco and Jessica Bernstein-Wax in Mexico City and Edmundo Velazquez in Puebla contributed.

Also popular are immigration corridos, such as Tres Veces Mojado (Three Times A Wetback) which was also made into a movie.

More toward the end of this thread, on related murders:

Another whirled, another whirled, another whirled world music thread 2007

there is a pretty decent book about this called Narcocorrido

Chalino Sanchez was the shit and so were Los Tigres way back when

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MAb6OZfaLQ

I've been hearing a lot about this on the local news.

Fucked up shit.

lol the unrelated bit in the end where a band's crew dies accidentally in a car crash.

I just saw a video by K-Paz de la Sierra on mun2 yesterday. They were all wearing matching shirts with their names and the band's logo above each breast pocket; they looked like a Jiffy Lube crew or something. But the music was okay.

One of the biggest thrills I got while working at Global Rhythm was getting to interview Los Tigres.

One of the biggest thrills I got while working at Global Rhythm was getting to interview Los Tigres.

!!!!!!!

Interesting piece on narcocorridos in today's New York Times. I had no idea there was what amounts to a mixtape culture, with songs the record companies won't release getting uploaded to YouTube.

http://nyti.ms/corr1do

thanks for that. interesting discussion on the appropriateness of prior restraints on speech, in the context of an alarming situation in mexico.

nyti.ms

is there an online bank of los tucanes' lyrics translated into english?

i can't tell from the lyrics if they're glorifying the drug culture, but from the video, yeah, it sure seems so.