Mexican Music In Chile

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225px, María José Quintanilla, a Chilean singer of ranchera.">ranchera.html" ;"title="María José Quintanilla, a Chilean singer of ranchera">María José Quintanilla, a Chilean singer of ranchera. Music of Mexico">Mexican music The music of Mexico is highly diverse, featuring a wide range of musical genres and performance styles. It has been influenced by a variety of cultures, primarily deriving from Europeans, Indigenous, and Africans. Music became an expression of M ...

enjoys widespread popularity in some social and geographic sectors of Chile. In particular, Mexican music is especially popular among Chilean rural lower classes. Geographically, Mexican music is most popular in Zona Sur, south-central Chile, but there are also significant listeners elsewhere, such as in the northern city of La Serena. Mexican

corrido The corrido (Spanish pronunciation: Help:IPA/Spanish, oˈriðo is a famous narrative metrical tale and poetry that forms a Ballad (music), ballad. The songs often feature topics such as oppression, history, daily life for criminals, the vaqu ...

s are commonly performed in Chilean national day celebrations such as Fiestas Patrias. Mexican music in Chile includes norteño music, a series of styles that originated in the rural northern half of Mexico, as well as the

and

ranchera Ranchera () or canción ranchera is a genre of traditional music of Mexico. It dates to before the years of the Mexican Revolution. Rancheras today are played in the vast majority of regional Mexican music styles. Drawing on rural traditional fo ...

genres; all of them are collectively referred as "Mexican music" in Chile. Though other regional styles of Mexican music are represented in Chile, similarly to the

Regional Mexican Regional Mexican music refers collectively to the regional subgenres of the country music of Mexico and its derivatives from the Southwestern United States. Each subgenre is representative of a certain region and its popularity also varies by ...

radio format and genre in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. Among the annual Mexican music festivals in Chile are the ''Festival del Cantar Mexicano Guadalupe del Carmen'' in

Chanco Chanco () is a name traditionally assigned to a Native American who is said to have warned a Jamestown colonist, Richard Pace (planter), Richard Pace, about an impending Indian massacre of 1622, Powhatan attack in 1622. This article discusses ho ...

, ''Festival Internacional de la Voz de la Música Mexicana de Puyehue'' in Puyehue, and ''Festival del Cantar Popular Mexicano'' in La Serena.

Origins

It is thought that Mexican music gained popularity, even in remote areas of Chile, through radio stations and Mexican movies. The first Chilean interpreters of Mexican music appeared in the 1940s, and by the time of

Jorge Negrete Jorge Alberto Negrete Moreno (; 30 November 1911 – 5 December 1953) was a Mexican singer and actor. He specialized in the musical genre of ranchera. His posthumous album "Fiesta Mexicana Volumen II" has been ranked by critics at No. 163 on t ...

's visit to Chile in 1946, Los Queretaros and many other ensembles specializing in Mexican music were thriving. Musicologist Laura Jordán González comments that "music listening practices in Chile have extensively shown a preference for foreign music, which has been explained by some authors as a result of successive non-protectionist policies". Radio stations specializing in Mexican music are common in Chile. They may play music from as early as six o'clock in the morning, when farmers begin their workday. Typically, broadcasts of Mexican music on these radio stations continue well into midnight. In the 1950s and 1960s, non-specialized radio stations such as Radio Yungay and Radio Agricultura created programs dedicated to Mexican music. According to lifelong Mexican music collector Fernando Méndez, the popularity of Mexican music was helped by similarities in Chilean and Mexican culture, such as the equivalence of the

charro ''Charro'', in Mexico, is historically the horseman from the countryside, the Ranchero, who lived and worked in the haciendas and performed all his tasks on horseback, working mainly as vaqueros and caporales, among other jobs. He was ren ...

with the

huaso A ''huaso'' () is a Chilean countryman and skilled horseman, similar to the United States, American cowboy, the Mexico, Mexican ''charro'' (and its northern equivalent, the ''vaquero''), the ''gaucho'' of Argentina, Uruguay and Rio Grande Do S ...

1970s to the present

As Mexican music gained ground in Chile by the 1970s, the popularity of the

was considered to be on par with the local cueca, a local genre regarded as typically Chilean and promoted by the Pinochet dictatorship. As happened in many aspects of Chilean society, Mexican music became politicized in the 1970s. Jorge Inostroza, a prominent

radio host A radio personality is a person who has an on-air position in radio broadcasting. A radio personality who hosts a radio show is also known as a radio host (North American English), radio presenter (British English) or radio jockey. Radio personali ...

and promoter of Mexican music, alienated much of his audience with his public support of the Pinochet dictatorship. The military dictatorship sought to isolate Chilean radio listeners from the outside world by changing

radio frequency Radio frequency (RF) is the oscillation rate of an alternating electric current or voltage or of a magnetic, electric or electromagnetic field or mechanical system in the frequency range from around to around . This is roughly between the u ...

to middle wavelengths. This, together with the shutdown of radio stations sympathetic to the former Allende administration, had a negative impact to Mexican music in Chile. Another challenge to Mexican music was the closing of

record shop A record shop or record store is a retail outlet that sells Sound recording and reproduction, recorded music. Per the name, in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, record shops only sold gramophone records. But over the course of t ...

s selling Mexican music which coincided with the installment of the dictatorship in the early 1970s. In response to these adversities, Chilean exiles in Spain and Mexico supplied their relatives in Chile with records of Mexican music. The scarcity of Mexican music records is thought to have contributed to the creation of the local recording company ''Sol de América'' and the

pirate Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and valuable goods, or taking hostages. Those who conduct acts of piracy are call ...

cassette brand ''Cumbre y Cuatro'', both of which catered to Mexican music enthusiasts. Elements of the Chilean military distrusted Mexican music, leading to cases where the music was denounced as "communist". The military's dislike of Mexican music may be rooted in the Allende administration's close links with Mexico, the " Mexican revolutionary discourse", and the overall low prestige of Mexican music in Chile. The dictatorship never suppressed Mexican music as a whole, as distinctions were made between different currents, some of which were actually promoted. Among the Chilean upper class, Mexican music has gained more acceptance since the 2000s. In part, this trend is explained by the popularity of the musical talent show '' Rojo Fama contra Fama'' on TVN, which aired for the first time in 2002. María José Quintanilla in particular gained acclaim on the program by singing

songs.

References

{{reflist

External links

2008 report on Mexican music in Chile
TVN official channel Mexican music history Music of Chile Cultural exchange