Banda: Mexican Musical Life Across Borders

by Helena Simonett

The first in-depth study of banda, a Mexican and Mexican American musical practice.

Runner-up for the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) - US Chapter Book Award. (2002)

Banda music has been performed by traditional brass bands in rural northwestern Mexico for more than a century, while technobanda, a newer style that has replaced the brass instruments with synthesizers and electric instruments, has become part of a lifestyle for tens of thousands of young people in the US, particularly in Los Angeles. The young people who flock to technobanda concerts also insist on the use of the Spanish language, a particular etiquette on the dance floor and above all, a specific style of cowboy/cowgirl apparel and belt buckles emblazoned with the name of their home Mexican state.

In this engaging and insightful ethnography, Helena Simonett brings us inside the music and its culture. Her discussions of narco-trafficking and narco-corridos ballads reveal the interconnected roles of musical, commercial and criminal networks, and illuminate how and why musical and social issues become so interconnected for banda artists and audiences. In this richly contextualized analysis of a singularly important contemporary musical style, Simonett sheds new light on how expressive culture both generates and reflects intersecting social identities.

Genres: Music

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 30, 2001

Reviews

[Ayla]

Reading this in 2026 is still so relevant. The patterns of music today with similar anti immigrant sentiment in the US right now seems like a repeat of the 90s. Just a few years ago, Peso Pluma and Eslaban Armado's song Ella Baila Sola was the first Mexican Regional song to be in the top 100 billboard charts. And now we've had Bad Bunny perform at the superbowl (who isn't Mexican of course, but Latin music is really striving and changing and influencing music right now in an awesome way).

Also, like reading the narcocorrido section and then reading Peso Plumas Wikipedia page was so eye opening and it made me understand so much more about today's music and Chicano culture.

[Hernán Hernández]

I thought it was a well written book on the history of Banda music and it's importance to the Mexican community between the U.S. and Mexico. I liked how it touched on the traditional Banda music and the more current "tecno-banda" that sent shockwaves through the U.S. specifically L.A., California. I think it is a book for anyone who loves traditional Mexican music.

[Omar Cardenas]

I found that what I was reading didn't really focus on the history of the music as much as I wanted to. Also I didn not like so much borrowing of quotes of other people.