Corridos Prohibidos

Los Tigres del Norte’s 1974 hit “Contrabando y Traición,” the tale of a pair of lovers smuggling marijuana in their car tires, helped introduce the world to the narcocorrido, a subgenre of regional Mexican music focused on the drug trade. On 1989’s Corridos Prohibidos, the Sinaloa natives, long based in San Jose, California, prove their continued mastery of the form with tightly constructed vignettes set to the classic sound of norteño music: crisp polka rhythms, agile accordion runs, and the sweetest close harmonies found on either side of the border.
“La Camioneta Gris” is clearly cut from the same cloth as Los Tigres’ breakout hit—an outlaw couple, a fast car, and a surprise twist worthy of the best short fiction—while songs like “El Zorro de Ojinaga” and “R. Uno” turn the lens upon the real-life drug lords Pablo Acosta Villarreal, who was killed in a 1987 shootout, and Rafael Caro Quintero, arrested on the lam in Costa Rica.
Beyond the subject matter itself, what makes Corridos Prohibidos such gripping listening is Los Tigres’ masterful storytelling: In “Ramiro Sierra”, a ballad of vengeful cattle rustlers, they paint a scene of violence with profound economy, tracing gunshots by their echoes across the mountains and burying the dying man’s cries in the sounds of the mooing herd. For all the strictly narrative thrills inherent in their music, there’s no mistaking its deeper moral sensibility: Despite its characteristically sprightly rhythm, “La Mafia Muere” is an unsparing look at the violence plaguing the Sinaloan capital, where “There is only mourning and families crying.”