>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. >> Elizabeth Peterson: Good afternoon everyone, I'm Betsy Peterson, the director of the American Folklife Center here in the Library of Congress and on behalf of the staff I want to welcome you today to this very special event. A lecture by Chicago area ethnomusicologist, Juan Dies, focusing on corridos the Story of the Mexican Ballad Tradition about outlaws and heroes. The corrido tradition is very vital and very alive and is perhaps more alive than it was 150 years ago. But this tradition is about tragic story songs focusing on outlaws, heroes, events of the day, commenting and talking about them. The first corrido recordings that we have in the American Folklife Center and we have a fairly significant collection was collected by John Lomax in San Antonio in 1934. But the timing of today's lecture and workshop and tomorrow's concert is no accident not only is September National Hispanic Heritage month beginning I guess today, but our concert by Juan and his bands, Sones de Mexico, takes place on September 16, which is Mexican Independence Day. So we're thrilled about all of this. A few small logistical concerns before we proceed first. As with all of our events we will be taping today's lecture. It becomes part of our archive and it also will make its way onto our website as a webcast, so we can share this with people throughout the world and for generations to come. So with that caveat, I would ask you to turn off any electronic devices you may have at the moment. We're also I just wanted to let you know we will be doing the lecture and then we'll be taking a small break and then I know some of you will be coming back. We are doing a corrido writing workshop, which is filled to capacity. We were asking for people to sign up and we're very excited about it. If you are not in on that you will actually be able to hear the results of that song writing workshop either later this evening or tomorrow. For this workshop today the new poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera from California is going to be joining folks at the song writing workshop and participating in the creation of the corrido. He will recite that or perhaps even perform it along with Juan this evening and then tomorrow the whole band will be performing the corrido. So please come to either event, we're very excited about it and we're also really excited about the poet Laureates interest and participation in all of this. He visited the American Folklife Center last week and spent an afternoon looking at some of our collections and we're really thankful for his support. I also want to thank the Poetry and Literature Center here at the library and I also want to thank our cosponsor, the Hispanic Cultural Society, we really appreciate your support. I also want to just take a moment to thank some of the staff at the American Folklife Center, it always takes several people to make these things happen and this event has been no different. I would especially like to thank Jennifer Cutting, Thea Austin, Stephanie Hall, and Steve Winick for all the hard work that they did on this event, thank you. And now to introduce our speaker, Juan Dies was raised in San Luis Pitocin, Mexico, where he first developed a passion for music and learned to play the guitar beginning at the age of six. At age 18 he migrated to the US and explored a range of different musical styles, jazz, folk, reggae, rock. He majored in music and anthropology at Earlham College and received an MA in folklore and ethnomusicology from Indiana University. He taught and studied music in Mexico, Spain and Kenya and served as Director of Community Programs at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music. He then cofounded Sones de Mexico with Victor Pichardo in 1994 and he has served on the governing boards of The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and Folk Alliance International. He's also done his own independent fieldwork research for the Smithsonian, for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Montgomery County Arts Council and the Lowell Folk Festival, so he's well-traveled. So with all of that said, let me please introduce Juan Dies and please give him a warm welcome [applause]. >> Juan Dies: Thank you, I'll keep the microphone, I can keep the mic. >> Elizabeth Peterson: Oh you will? >> Juan Dies: Yes. >> Elizabeth Peterson: Okay. >> Juan Dies: Yes, we might need it. Yes, well thank you and I'll have to say corrido has always been one of my passions. You heard that I started playing guitar at the age of six and one of the first songs I played was a corrido. Corridos are very much fun, they are songs that tell a story and usually a tragic story and they're engaging even for a child. Some of my students now are children and I teach children how to write stories about tragedies going on in their own lives. Maybe they lost their lunch money or they lost their pet turtle or anything can be turned into a corrido. And it's a wonderful tradition. It was years later when I was studying at Indiana University under John McDowell that he introduced me to an academic study of corridos and we visited the corrido as a form of literature. And it was a revelation to me to take this very mundane folk song and all of a sudden use tools, very sophisticated tools to investigate what was going on in the corrido poetically, socially, anthropologically, musicologically, very interesting. So when I moved to Chicago I started an outreach program teaching corridos in the schools and we'll get to see a little bit of that. But let's get into our subject matter here. Well one small commercial before I get on with this. I want to acknowledge the National Endowment for the Arts, they have funded a program for us this year to teach corridos around the country. So this year I've been to the Adirondacks, I'm going to Los Angeles, I've been in the Midwest in several places bringing this very lecture and workshops that I'm doing here today. I also want to acknowledge my bandmates who are here, Zacbe Pichardo just walked out, our harp player, Lorenda Iniguez and Juan Rivera, they're back there, Eric Hines and Gonzalo Cordova who's parking our vans trying to find parking in Washington DC, he is a true hero. So let's -- I'm sure we all want to know what is a corrido right, we came here. Maybe some of you know already. How can I make one right, we'll be addressing that this afternoon in a workshop that'll be about 20 people, we'll sit and write an original corrido. And then what is it used for, what can we use corridos for. And this comes to the applied part of my work about bringing this to schools, using it for literacy programs, using it for conflict resolution, using it for peacemaking, you know. But let's begin, I think the primary focus today, this hour that we'll spend together will be about what is a corrido. So let me test your knowledge, that's why I wanted to keep this microphone, about corridos. What is a corrido, what do you know about corridos, anybody? How about you? What do you think is a corrido? >> No idea. >> Juan Dies: No idea. Okay, yes. >> I believe it's [inaudible] story. >> Juan Dies: Okay, yes. >> And [inaudible] something about [inaudible]. >> Juan Dies: It is a narrative type of story right. Okay, anybody heard of corridos before and what kind of story, any story? >> I would say it's a song that tells a story. >> Juan Dies: Okay, so it's a story in song that helps. Yes. >> It's usually a story in a song about a character, usually it's kind of a hero and sometimes that hero can be like a [inaudible]. >> Juan Dies: Yes, definitely hero is a big issue on corridos, a person is heroic in some manner, anti-hero. >> I had this impression, I'm not sure this is right. >> Juan Dies: Yeah. >> That it had to do with like the border, I don't know if that's true. >> Juan Dies: Border yeah, but there's a lot of. >> Because there's like. >> Corridos, there's a lot of tragedy going on in the border so, it's a tragic story too I might add yes. But yes, but they're not exclusively from the border but yes. >> My impression was that, you know, they emerge in the rural areas of Mexico. >> Yes, I would say yes. They emerge, the corridos have a long history migrating from the countryside to urban areas from iilliterate composition to, you know, literary compositions of corridos, so yeah. >> But everything you've said so far can be applied to musica ranchera, what's the difference? >> Juan Dies: Musica -- well there's a narrative element, the rancheras don't always, it's just unrequited love or lament, you know, they're just I'm so lonely I want to cry. The corrido is actually. Okay, so that's good. Okay, what countries do corridos come from? >> [Inaudible] mentioned that they have a long, long history of [inaudible]. >> Juan Dies: Yes. >> [Inaudible] I understand that they come from medieval times in Spain and. >> Juan Dies: Good, good, good. [ Inaudible Comment ] Yes, we're going to get to that, absolutely. It's part of a long tradition of, you know, old as humanity I would say. How old is this tradition? Yeah, you anticipated that, yeah. So yeah we'll see, you know, some people talk about 150 years for corridos, but it definitely has some forms that predated the corrido. So do corridos narrate fictional stories, anybody know? Corrido about Mickey Mouse or Superman or. >> True stories. >> True stories, yeah that is an important element. At least the intent of the corrido is that they be factual and they do a lot of effort through the song to reinforce the factual basis of the song by citing dates, naming people, very specific things. How long can a corrido song last? Maybe somebody from the Library of Congress buying enough tape. So yes they could, you know, we've all heard of music being shortened by the recording industry and especially when recordings could only fit three minutes to a side artists had to conform to that if they wanted their music recorded they had to shorten their compositions to three minutes or four minutes. And that certainly happened to corridos. Some old corrido singers could brag about, you know, show off their memory and sing a 20 minute long song with all details about the story and it is a point of pride being able to remember all the verses. Is the main character always the victim of the story in tragic corridos? We're getting a little more technical here. The main character always the victim? When you hear the song about the corrido de mi hermano gemelo, corrido de valente Quintero. That character is usually dead or dies in the corrido, so you don't want to have a corrido written about you. The main character is typically the victim. Is it common for the main character in a corrido to act in a heroic manner? That goes back to what you were saying back there. Yes, it's all about that. The most exciting part of the corrido is the lead character showing his or her bravery in the face of danger, usually in some act against a force bigger than themselves, an enemy, a general, someone who outranks them, possibly the governments. That's why the outlaw part comes out, you know, in there. How many narrative sections are there ideally in the development of a corrido? Well this is more related to what we're going to be studying later in the day, but I taught you about eight different ones that take us through the narrative of the corrido. There's usually an introduction of characters, there is a warning, our hero is warned before anything would happen to them, then that person defies the warning and that's where they show their valor or their courage. Then they are fell victim to that defiance, they're killed and then comes the moral of the story, had they listened to the warning nothing of this would've happened, so moral and then a wrap up. The most common rhyme scheme in corridos is an eight syllable stance. So this poet's poetic form goes back to the 16th century in Spanish poetry and it's very common, you know, throughout folk music in Latin America. It's not exclusively eight syllables, there's corridos with different lengths, but it is a very common one. Oh and the rhyme scheme I'm sorry, the rhyme scheme is AB, ABCB or ABCBDB, very simple and poetic meter eight syllables. Okay, extra point. Maybe somebody can answer this. What animal typically appears in the farewell section of many corridos? Olivia, maybe you know this one. What animal? >> A dove. >> Juan Dies: A dove. >> Caballo? >> Juan Dies: Caballo, no I think it's a -- there's corridos about caballos, there's corridos about, [inaudible] there's corridos about [inaudible], but at the end the animal that takes the story away is a [inaudible] palomita. Very good, very good. Okay, so let's listen to a corrido. I got a special request from the library to play for you a corrido from the collection. This was collected for the Library of Congress by John Lomax in Brownsville, Texas tin 1939. Now corridos are part of this Hispanic tradition, a Mexican tradition, they evolve, they're entertaining, people share them at home, but how do we get them recorded. All of a sudden begin to be researchers, music hunters that go out there equipped with this new technology of recording equipment and they bring it out to Brownsville, Texas and they begin to ask around who sings corridos or who sings ballads, who are the best players around and try to get them on record. And of course, they're brought to the cathedral of collections here in the capital in the Library of Congress where they are stored and classified and numbers are assigned to them. So this is where we find this corrido. It's now available online under the name of la [foreign language]. The corrido is actually called [foreign language], so it's miscataloged. He sang another song under the other title in the same session, but it was miswritten. So it's a ballad about the derailment and robbery of an American train by a band of Mexican [inaudible] led by Jose Mosqueda. So this is again the border conflicts, you know, somebody brought it up here that seems a lot of corridos are. Well, there's a lot of conflict in the border and ever since the, you know, the expansion of the US over those states and families being displaced the [inaudible] were a counter movement trying to cause havoc in all those territories. So this is definitely a point of pride. The ballad was sung by Jose Suarez, a blind Cuban, [inaudible] and celebrated singer of border ballads. So John Lomax came to Brownsville and he said who sings corridos, they said well we know this great Cuban guy. So bring him over, let's get him recorded right. So he is a good singer. So it was collected by John and Ruby T. Lomax in 1939 at the home of J. K. Wells in Brownsville, Texas. So J. K. Wells is another singer, I think he has some songs in the collection as well, some English ballads. This recording is found in the Library of Congress under that catalogue number, 2609A1, under the title [foreign language], apparently being confused with another ballad collected by Jose Mosqueda during the same session. And this error was pointed out by Americo Paredes in the 1950s and it still remains in the [inaudible]. Okay, so let's listen, here we go. [ Foreign Language Music ] Okay, here we go. [ Foreign Language Music ] He repeats it. [ Foreign Language Music ] Sorry about that. [ Foreign Language Music ] Okay, well technical difficulty here, but let me point out the factual basis where it is very characteristic of corridos to begin with a headline, a date of where it happened and also it tells you exactly what this whole story is about, a robbery by Jose Mosqueda. >> Do we know what year [inaudible]? >> Juan Dies: It doesn't say, corridos typically would say something like that, but in this one. >> When was Jose Mosqueda kind of robbing trains [inaudible]? >> Juan Dies: I have no idea. There may be a recorded -- I haven't done the research on this particular corrido, but he might be recorded in other historical records of sorts. So here he is flaunting his, you know, waving the pistol in his hand, we jump the train on American soil, you know, it is sort of a heroic defiance. And the Americans, you know, are portrayed as, you know, cowardly and afraid are saying these Mexicans are so cruel they left the train wobbling out of its tracks, oh my God. And then he mentions, I don't know the specifics again with these characters, Santiago Brito, then he mentions representative Justino who are also, you know, cowardly running away, the corrido is putting it into evidence like some cowardly acts by other people. I mean corrido singers have gotten killed over things they have said in their corridos, this is very real and continues to be to the present day. You know, you can Google some story of a corrido singer being shot or killed and you'll find a story in the last two years of somebody being killed over a song. So Jose Mosqueda said standing on that broken hill, don't worry my friends here comes another train, we'll get another one, defiant. Simon Garcia another one of his associates was not caught and he went to spend money on. Esteban Salas also he was caught and he apparently from what the corrido says he created the iron that they used to lift the tracks of the -- so he was sentenced to two years in prison for that. And then there is a characteristic closing very typical of corridos where there's a farewell formula, let me see oops, a lot of RF. Oh-oh and here I bid my farewell as I walk out on the trail, the man who derailed the train was named Jose Mosqueda. May we always remember his name, let it be recorded. Yes. >> This was 1891. >> Juan Dies: 1891, oh good you found it. [ Inaudible Comment ] Great, great. Okay, very good, very good. So 1891. >> Yes. >> Juan Dies: Yes, okay. Mosqueda I now take my leave, but my friends will stay here. The man who derailed the train was Jose Mosqueda. Many times I describe -- corridos have been called a newspaper of the people at a time when 70 percent of people in Mexico could not read or write, apparently they were getting their stories from corridos. But this view has been challenged because corridos continue to be sung and they're no longer news. You're singing songs from 100 years ago and you're still listening with. So it's not about the news anymore, it's really -- it's a hero tale. It's a statue built for a person so that they may always be remembered for their courage and their defiance. So what is a corrido? A corrido is a song, it's a Mexican song. We don't see corridos -- well nowadays people make corridos in Colombia and other countries, but it is something that evolved in Mexico. The corrido narrates a tragic or heroic event in the life of a real person. Corridos are performed in a manner that is non-emotional. There'll be jokes sometimes in the corrido about something horrible that happened to someone, but the corrido is very detached and sometimes it works some humor into it. So it's a very journalistic style based on facts, sometimes with humors. The corrido follow a series of poetic rules. They have the ABCB rhyme, octosyllabic meter, they have a tragic theme. Examples, crimes of passion, someone getting killed over -- a girl being killed at a dance for refusing to dance with a man, an act of treason, confrontation against authority, lot of corridos about this. Among rivals, people who used to be friends before and then they over a woman or over a drug deal or something that found them becoming rivals. During a war times, the times when the most corridos were written during the Mexican Revolution, now with the drug wars, they're flourishing times for corridos. Among politicians or in the drug trade. Natural disasters, there's a few corridos about hurricanes, earthquakes. Commemorative, self-aggrandizing, now we see people with a lot of money commissioning corridos to be written about them and with happy endings. They're really ruining the whole thing, but they're really playing on the heroic part of the corrido. Corridos about animals, you mentioned horses, yes horses, roosters, dogs, etcetera. The music style doesn't define corridos, so you hear people saying play something to the rhythm of corrido or in a corrido. The corridos can happen in many musical styles. We see them accompany -- the accompaniment can vary according to the regional Mexican-style, the region where they come from so we can see them as a banda. We can see them norteno, with a solo guitar and harp or just sung a cappella. So this whole definition can be dismissed entirely because in reality we do not have a national board that regulates what a corrido is. Corridos are written and people call their compositions corridos and they put them out there and they challenge the definition. The people who are belaboring over this definition are us, the scholars who are coming and trying to create a definition for corridos. So the minute you say that corridos have to be tragic, someone comes up with a corrido that isn't tragic. When you say that they have to be -- one other characteristic of a corrido is that it doesn't have a chorus. A corrido means all the way through, they're sung one verse after another after another after another and there's no chorus. Of course, someone will come and will make a corrido with a chorus. So let's take a look at some of the origins of the corridos and this takes us back to the very beginnings of humanity. The Iliad, some will say that Homer would not write the Iliad out of his own imagination, but he was actually a collector of verses that were being recited or sung about the Trojan wars. And he wrote a compendium of a very long sequence of stories of these wars. So here's the original Greek portrayal. Notice that there is a graphic that accompanies the text and when we visit the corridos we're going to see broad sides where we see the same usage of images and texts being used together. Many times, you know, in a population that is with a high illiteracy rate people like to see images and they like to hear the songs and that's how the oral history gets passed on even when it begins to be written by people like Homer. Here's another piece of the text. Let's jump forward to the 11th century in Spain to the very beginnings of the Spanish language. El Cid is one of the first pieces of literature in a language that we can recognize as Spanish, as what we know today as Spanish. And curiously both of these seminal works that I'm presenting here today are written in verse, El Cid one of them. So El Cid is the story of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, a hero who travels to defend his land and the honor of his family. Here's an image of an original text and here's a little transcript and you can see the original old Spanish, which is just enough to be understood by today's Spanish [foreign language]. And there's a translation to what it would be in modern Spanish. Here's English and I'm going to play an actor reading an excerpt from this. [ Foreign Language ] So here's this 11 verse meter and it's one of the earliest pieces of literature in the Spanish language. So let's move forward now to Mexico. In Mexico these stories about noblemen, usually these romances that were told in the stories of the troubadours and the jugglers and the courts, now begin to be told by the people and for the people about regular folk. And this is an important piece that Americo Paredes was noting. America Paredes was a folklorist who pioneered the study of corridos in the United States along the border and one of the things he noted was this break from previous forms of narrative tragic poetry and one of them was that now the stories were about regular people. And corridos have probably been around since the mid-19th century and they have gone through various stages of development, they're like an old friend that you know has life changes and we have to stick with them as our friends. One of the first popularizations of the corrido happened in print and copies of corridos were being printed and distributed, sometimes sold by the singers of the corridos just the way an artist would sell CDs today and play a little bit and they would sell the broadsides. I think some broadsides began to take a life of their own in the printing presses where they were being made. Some of the printers took the pen and began to compose corridos with more scholarly knowledge of poetry and incorporating. So we see some corridos that begin to be a little more sophisticated. Some corridos that may have never, I suspect, have never been sung, they only existed in print. There were publications that would publish a corrido as part of their newspaper, add a corrido about today's current event and, you know, we see that in the early 20th century for sure. Songbooks were being published, you know, before records were being sold, people would buy the lyrics and have [inaudible] okay. And notice how long they are, I mean today's corridos are eight stances long or 10 maybe, look at this. If you want to sing this whole thing it would be -- this is before recording industry, they're quite long. So corridos today, corridos are popular on the radio, they're played in different regional style. So let's listen to some corridos that we could hear today. Alfredo Beltran, so this is Sinaloa. We're going to hear a corrido accompanied by brass bands, which is characteristic of the folk music of Sinaloa and this is where the State of Sinaloa is located in Mexico. They said a lot of these instruments came through the seaport of Mazatlan by ship and were used because of their loudness and appeal, especially during the revolution they would create an impression on people when they heard banda music, it still does today. So this is a corrido of Alfredo Beltran, this is one of those corridos that I would call the self-aggrandizing or vanity corridos because they praise this man. [ Foreign Language Music ] Okay, now we go to [inaudible], il corrido de Laurita Garza. Laurita Garza was a schoolteacher and this is a crime of passion. She was engaged to be married to a man and when she discovered that he was going to marry someone else she took him out. And we're going to hear the music here a little different played with a norteno lineup accordion, [foreign language], and string bass. [ Foreign Language Music ] Okay, Laurita Garza. Now we're going to hear mariachi playing the Corrido de Los Perez, a very popular corrido about a family feud, the Perez family killing each other and now we hear this with mariachi music from the state of Jalisco okay. And you know let me point out on these corridos the defiance of Laurita Garza and, you know, it fits the character of the corrido no matter what time in history, there are some constant elements to corridos. This defiance, this factual basis, this woman acting on something greater than her own and at the end she kills herself out of shame for what she'd done. Mariachis los Perez where are you? [ Foreign Language Music ] This is a great corrido, we know it was 1911, two brothers killed each other and their first cousin as well, then it was a Thursday, April 20th, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. So there's definitely -- and you know we see a lot of stuff in quotes, that's the defiance part, the juicy part of the corrido where you're going to see the two forces taunting each other and challenging each other before they kill. Okay, narco-corridos, of course, everywhere I go and good to see you guys, narco-corridos is a re-emergence of the corrido form now in new bottles. The drug trade has created a lot of death, a lot of defiance of the law, it has created, you know, a lot of outlaws and a lot of juicy material for corridos. There's a lot of money also in people commissioning corridos to champion all their going-abouts and their, yeah. So this is one of the artists producing a corrido. That is not a guitar. This is another one with fast cars and fast guns and one of the guns in there is gold-plated. These are the roots of the drug trade, Nuevo Leon, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, and those are the places where many of the corridos are being sung and written. And some corrido singers being killed over the corridos they write because they're not popular with the other side. John McDowell writes a great analysis of corridos in the state of Guerrero and he notes that one of his informants was -- called himself a [foreign language], the coward one and he wanted to be very diplomatic. As he was recording the events he wanted to be safe and stay alive and be even-handed in this portrayal of the events because otherwise they would come looking for him. Okay, so here's a bust. This is one of the album covers with a parental advisory for explicit content not unlike gangster rap and an accordion and two AKA guns there, the corridos and narco-corridos. Here's another one money, guns, pura lumbre. Narco corridos alto calibre right. So corridos are not anywhere near the verge of disappearing right now, they're extremely popular. So I'm going to play something hear what you may hear in a narco-corrido. This is from [foreign language]. It's [foreign language], powdered snow, you can imagine. And the little section in italics at the beginning is just a spoken conversation before the song begins and it says, what's up my man, I think this stuff is really pure, no my friend put away your keys I like it in a line. Hold on, hold on this is the good stuff, hold on a second. All right, I have to include this. [ Foreign Language Music ] Okay, well you get the idea right. So just a final word about the study of corridos, you know, as people have come to try to make sense of corridos or we have the tools developed by different folklorists in studying balladry, Tristram Coffin developed a method of analyzing ballads in Scottish balladry, which was applied to Mexican corridos by Professor Americo Paredes. And one of the analysis tools that he brings on is called the emotional core and this is one thing that I have used a lot in very practical ways for my own teaching of corridos that I'm going to do later today and that I do in school and I do with children. The emotional core, here's another -- this is my professor, so John McDowell was a student of Americo Paredes, so I am like the grandchild, academic grandchild of America Paredes through John. So here's an emotional core analysis of a corrido. We have oral corridos that depend on people's memory, vary on different recordings. Some people will remember more verses, some people remember less verses. So as the scholar begins to analyze and record several versions of the same corrido and they line them up side-by-side, they identify certain verses that repeat themselves in many versions of the song, they continue to appear. He considers those to have a special emotional core for the existence of that corrido. And there are some that only appear in certain versions that don't have as heavy an influence on that story. So as they chart these different ones we see in Roman numerals the emotional core begins to emerge on certain elements that are more common in corridos. So we begin to see that many corridos have some type of introduction, a permission from the audience, may I have your permission to tell you this tragic tale. There is information about dates at the beginning as any good storyteller would have. Then there's the warning, elements of warning are heroes that something bad may happen to them. Then our heroes defy those warnings against their best interests and as a result of that in Roman numeral four there is a tragic outcome to that defiance. So there is no rule book for corridos, but I created one based on the emotional core and I apply it to my teachings. So I form a very structured way of teaching corridos and I want to end with a short video that shows some of the work I do in the schools with children and I have written hundreds of corridos, written by children. So we're going to switch the audio now. >> Before you do that, can I ask a question? >> Juan Dies: Yes. [ Inaudible Comment ] Oh yeah, yeah there's corridos also in a polka beat that would be like in four and then if you go to [foreign language], you could find an [inaudible] in six, eight [singing music beat]. So they adapt themselves to the music. I also have some examples I don't have time to play them, but the corrido that I found at the Library of Congress that's that Cuban singer, I found two other corridos sung by him, they have the exact same melody. They sing [inaudible], but he just switches subjects, he just. But all the ones I found were exactly the same. So it just goes to show corrido is a poetry form and the music is the vehicle for delivering. So let me play this for you and. [ Foreign Language Music ] My name is Juan Dies, I'm a member of Sones de Mexico ensemble and we specialize in folk music traditions from different regions of Mexico. [ Music ] And one of the things we do besides performing and recording is teaching. In fact, we are a non-profit organization for this very purpose. One of my favorite subjects to teach is the song writing class on the Mexican ballad tradition of traffic corridos. Corridos are a type of song, but not any kind of song, they're a song that tells a story, a narrative song. But they're not any kind of Mexican tragic narrative songs, they are true Mexican tragic narrative songs. All the stories that are told in the corridos are true stories. Corridos have been in the Mexican culture for about 150 years and they are still very popular today. I have been teaching corridos for about 15 years and I've traveled to a few parts of the US teaching this class. Whether I'm teaching children or adults it's a subject that really captivates students. I have met many regular folks, working people, housewives, students, etcetera who write their own corridos and they either sing them themselves at home or maybe a local band will play them. People in those communities like to hear the events in their communities even the tragic ones memorialized, so they can relive them and feel that catharsis. [ Foreign Language Music ] I teach corridos in a very structured way. These structured stories are also helpful for students to learn how to organize their thoughts. Just like a five paragraph essay the corrido will take you through a structure in telling a story. Because it is a tragic story it is going to involve something sad in respect for your audience you ask for permission. [ Foreign Language Music ] I also teach about the eight syllable verse that is very common to corridos. [ Foreign Language ] And we listen to recordings of corridos old and new so that students can see what I'm teaching really applies to the practice. We also do rhyming exercises, we learn about rhyme patterns ABCB, ABAB or ABCBDB, etcetera. [ Foreign Language ] At one point students have to come up with a tragic story which can range from losing your lunch money to losing a relative. I want you to start thinking about what events your corridos will be about, you have to choose some tragic event that you have experienced or that you know that is true. Who has a tragedy and wants to share right now? What happened? Research is an important part of writing corridos. With reporting comes responsibility and corridos have to get the facts right. Sometimes students have to interview family members or look up something in the library. [ Music ] The corrido song writing class covers many skillsets, storytelling, poetry, music, history, research, news reporting, it deals with tragedy, including a death or expressing your experiences through poetry and song. [ Music ] I teach corridos mostly in Spanish, but then I figure if you can do Japanese haikus in English why can't you do corridos in English too. Creativity is an interesting exercise because there really isn't a right or a wrong answer. We do some exercises to loosen up students' creativity. I use cartoons and drawing comics as a way for students to storyboard their ideas into corridos. [ Music ] Drawing corridos is very much a part of the tradition. The prints of Jose Guadalupe Posada in the early 20th century are very saw in the early 20th century are very much a part of the corrido tradition. I have worked with artists who can teach students the process and integrate it into my corrido class. [ Classroom Discussions ] I always help students with their corridos. I may help them with a couple of lines if they're stuck or if there isn't enough time in class to finish the exercise. It is very important to me that students walk away with a finished corrido in their hand. [ Foreign Language Music ] Sometimes we do a culminating performance for the community. The tragedies that are told by the kids some of them are small tragedies, we have other ones that involve difficult stories or hard stories, I want you to know that we always try to do this with a lot of respect and always remembering that corridos are a way to honor the people that we are writing about. For longer programs sometimes we give students a CD of their corrido to show their family and friends and a certificate to emphasize a sense of accomplishment and stress to the teachers and parents the academic value of having written a corrido. With an emphasis on literacy both in English and in Spanish and with a subject matter that is engaging and touches on many skillsets corridos have worked really well as one of the programs we offer with Sones de Mexico [inaudible]. [ Foreign Language Music ] Okay, well thank you very much. [ Applause ] We may have time for a couple questions, I know we have a break before we begin the workshop. So yes. >> I had heard that [inaudible]. >> Juan Dies: The. [ Inaudible Comment ] Oh I'm sure there was some of that going on. The challenge of that theory is that they continue to be sung today, so they're no longer new, they're just celebrations of La Valentina, [inaudible] or all those Valente Quintero or [foreign language], all those heroes of the revolution that so many people don't know from history books they know them because there was a corrido written about them. Yes. >> I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about [inaudible] versus writing or [inaudible] are they written [inaudible]. >> Juan Dies: I think they're written. >> [Inaudible] change. >> Juan Dies: I think they're written, they're composed and memorized. I think individual performers may have their own repertoire, may add certain elements, but there isn't an improvisational quality as there is in music from [inaudible] from other places. This is a composed piece and singers will attempt to memorize as much as they can. The oral ones that haven't been written are more interesting because they present more variations. But I would see them more as mutation of the corrido rather than improvised. >> For historical corridos [inaudible] is there a sense of there's an author or a songwriter or do you [inaudible]? >> Juan Dies: Well many of them are in the public domain, but the modern ones yes, I mean they're all probably copyrighted. There's also fictional ones that are, you know, [foreign language] that some people know as [foreign language] is known that it was made up, it was written as an interesting story. The corrido [foreign language] is very popular by Jose Alfredo Jimenez is fictional. But they're out there in the corrido form. >> Is there any relationship between the corridos and the [inaudible], you know, for a tragic illness or some tragedy that happened to you, but in the end you're saved. >> Juan Dies: Yes, well I think they share the same culture, there are many different outlets for the same culture, but I don't know if they're related in that sense. [ Inaudible Comment ] A good source of inspiration for corridos yes. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well thank you very much, we're going to take a short break [applause]. >> This has been a presentation at the Library of Congress. Visit us at LOC.gov.