CHANGED TUNES

Pioneers Of Narco-Corridos Are Distancing Themselves From Today's Brasher
Songs Of The Border Drug Trade.

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."