Two days before her new album was launched, musical icon Vivir Quintana was behind barbed wire at a women’s prison in Mexico. The singer had spent the past 10 years visiting women incarcerated after defending themselves and, in doing so, killing their abusers.
Their stories became part of “Cosas que Sorprenden a la Audiencia” (Things that Surprise the Audience), Quintana’s latest album, released Thursday.
It tells the story of 10 such women but in a first, Quintana does it through “corridos,” a typically male-dominated and controversial Mexican music genre that’s soared into the spotlight in recent years.
a typically male-dominated and controversial Mexican music genre that’s soared into the spotlight in recent years.
The male-dominated part seems to make this an excellent choice considering the subject of her song. Not being familiar with it though, I wondered what makes it controversial. If anyone else is curious about that part…
Quintana’s new music goes further. She uses “corridos,” a type of northern Mexican ballads that has seen both an international renaissance and a backlash, with critics claiming that “narco corridos” — songs that glorify cartel violence and use misogynistic lyrics – have dominated the form.
The topic has grown so heated that the United States even revoked the visas of members of one band who projected the face of a drug cartel boss onto a large screen during a performance.
Instead of banning the corridos as a growing number of Mexican states have done, the country’s first woman president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has proposed that the government promote a new style of corridos that avoid glorifying violence and discrimination against women.
“We’re not banning a musical genre; that would be absurd,” Sheinbaum said recently. “What we’re proposing is that the lyrics not glorify drugs, violence, violence against women or viewing women as a sexual object.”
This is fantastic!
There’s a chasm between the law and justice
I’m hopeful that this will help some of these women who did nothing more than to keep themselves alive
