MORE THAN 40 years since their debut, San Jose’s Los Tigres del Norte have been the voice of “the other Mexico,” as one of their title albums has it. For decades they’ve specialized in corridos about desperate men and women, and courage and pride under difficult, sometimes lethal, circumstances. La Granja is the quintet’s newest, with a controversial, highly political title song that’s a concept album of its own. Mucho thanks to David Ortez’s blog for his translation and interpretation of this fable in the familiar funny-animals vein. It’s a parable about the deteriorating state of Mexico as the 100th anniversary of the Revolution approaches: the good ol’ United States’ sweet tooth for drugs and the drug-baron’s terror that’s been unleashed; the drying up of Mexico because of drought; the wall-building on the border; Vincente Fox’s compromised attempt to fight the drug lords; and the working stiff (el granjero, the farmer) caught in the mess. Sounds like a heavy load to dress up as Aesop, but if the band didn’t have the crunch and the melodies behind them, the album wouldn’t have sold like it did.
Other aspects of commitment: they had the principles to drop out of an awards show at the National Auditorium in Mexico City last year for being forbidden to play “La Granja.” Even lesser known is El Tigre’s donation of $500,000 to the Strachwitz Frontera collection at UCLA, the archive that answers the musical question “So what is Chris Strachwitz of Down Home Records going to do with all those thousands of vintage border music 78 RPMs he collected?”
LOS TIGRES DEL NORTE perform Saturday (April 3) at 7pm at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, 150 W. San Carlos St., San Jose. Tickets are $50. (408.792.4111)
