Music is an important cultural aspect of everyday life of people living in northern Mexico and Mexican-Americans within the southern United States. One such type of music that is very popular among these people is cumbia, which is a dance-oriented music style originating from afro-Cuban roots that has spread throughout Latin America and wherever Latin Americans settle. Cumbia has grown from its origins across northern Mexico and the southern United States and plays in important role in the cultural identity of the people of these areas. Cumbia within northern Mexico comes from different styles, borders, and collective identities based on the Colombian coast. This style of music began to spread around the 1950’s through cinema, film, and other
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The Scholar Manuel Pena describes the musical scene in northern Mexico as an “evolution of successful musical formulas in the first few decades of the twentieth century, symbolizing an ideological defense against the economic and political domination of Anglo-Saxon sectors of Texas” (Pena, 1993). Cumbia and other styles of Hispanic music revitalized Mexican culture as unique from any other. The music industry within the city of Montery included many, “radio stations, record labels, publishing houses, event organizers, and artistic organizers,” that created the perfect infrastructure to make Montery, “a mandatory musical reference point for the entire country,” of Mexico (Olvera Gudino, 89). With all of these resources, much discography and recordings of cumbia were created and extensively distributed throughout the surrounding areas garnering much popularity for the musical style. Around the 70’s many popular Hispanic singers began to “[transform] the ballad and other pop music into cumbia,” thus further increasing the popularity of the style (Olvera Gudino, 92). Later in the 90’s more popular artists, “took up cumbia as an appealing genre in which to construct their musical style” (Olvera Gudino, 94). But there was a lack of innovation that slowed the spread of the cumbia style. With increased political and economic turmoil in Mexico, many musicians and performers migrated north to escape the instability caused by the war on drug cartels (Olvera Gudino, 94). This has caused the industry to move north and has decreased the buildup of the domestic
The Scholar Manuel Pena describes the musical scene in northern Mexico as an “evolution of successful musical formulas in the first few decades of the twentieth century, symbolizing an ideological defense against the economic and political domination of Anglo-Saxon sectors of Texas” (Pena, 1993). Cumbia and other styles of Hispanic music revitalized Mexican culture as unique from any other. The music industry within the city of Montery included many, “radio stations, record labels, publishing houses, event organizers, and artistic organizers,” that created the perfect infrastructure to make Montery, “a mandatory musical reference point for the entire country,” of Mexico (Olvera Gudino, 89). With all of these resources, much discography and recordings of cumbia were created and extensively distributed throughout the surrounding areas garnering much popularity for the musical style. Around the 70’s many popular Hispanic singers began to “[transform] the ballad and other pop music into cumbia,” thus further increasing the popularity of the style (Olvera Gudino, 92). Later in the 90’s more popular artists, “took up cumbia as an appealing genre in which to construct their musical style” (Olvera Gudino, 94). But there was a lack of innovation that slowed the spread of the cumbia style. With increased political and economic turmoil in Mexico, many musicians and performers migrated north to escape the instability caused by the war on drug cartels (Olvera Gudino, 94). This has caused the industry to move north and has decreased the buildup of the domestic