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At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the Nor-tec phenomenon emerged from the border city of Tijuana, and through modern Internet technology quickly conquered a global audience. Marketed as a kind of "ethnic" electronic dance music, Nor-tec samples sounds of traditional music from the north of Mexico, transforming these sounds through computer technology used in European and American techno music and electronica. Mostly middle-class artists in their thirties, and with few exceptions all from Tijuana, Nor-tec musicians tend to avoid the mainstream music industry's channels, distributing works instead through the underground, global means of the Internet, enabling a loyal international following to grow rapidly. Perched on the border between Mexico and the United States, Tijuana has media links to both countries, with peoples, currencies, and cultural goods -perhaps especially music- from both sides circulating intensely within the city. Tijuana's older residents and their more mobile, cosmopolitan-minded children thus engage in a constant struggle with identity and nationality, appropriation and authenticity. Nor-tec music in its very composition encapsulates this city's struggle. It resonates with issues felt on the global level, while holding vastly different meanings to the variety of communities that embrace it. In Nor-tec Rifa!, Alejandro L. Madrid crafts a fascinating account of this music and the city that fostered its birth. With an impressive hybrid of musicology, ethnomusicology, cultural and performance studies, urbanism, and border studies, Nor-tec Rifa! offers compelling insights into the cultural production of Nor-tec as it stems from ortena, banda, and grupera traditions. The book is also amongst the first to offer detailed accounts of Nor-tec music's composition process.
Show moreAt the dawn of the twenty-first century, the Nor-tec phenomenon emerged from the border city of Tijuana, and through modern Internet technology quickly conquered a global audience. Marketed as a kind of "ethnic" electronic dance music, Nor-tec samples sounds of traditional music from the north of Mexico, transforming these sounds through computer technology used in European and American techno music and electronica. Mostly middle-class artists in their thirties, and with few exceptions all from Tijuana, Nor-tec musicians tend to avoid the mainstream music industry's channels, distributing works instead through the underground, global means of the Internet, enabling a loyal international following to grow rapidly. Perched on the border between Mexico and the United States, Tijuana has media links to both countries, with peoples, currencies, and cultural goods -perhaps especially music- from both sides circulating intensely within the city. Tijuana's older residents and their more mobile, cosmopolitan-minded children thus engage in a constant struggle with identity and nationality, appropriation and authenticity. Nor-tec music in its very composition encapsulates this city's struggle. It resonates with issues felt on the global level, while holding vastly different meanings to the variety of communities that embrace it. In Nor-tec Rifa!, Alejandro L. Madrid crafts a fascinating account of this music and the city that fostered its birth. With an impressive hybrid of musicology, ethnomusicology, cultural and performance studies, urbanism, and border studies, Nor-tec Rifa! offers compelling insights into the cultural production of Nor-tec as it stems from ortena, banda, and grupera traditions. The book is also amongst the first to offer detailed accounts of Nor-tec music's composition process.
Show moreList of Figures
List of Music Examples
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Nor-tec and the Borders
1: Origins Revisited. Myth and Discourse in the Nortec
Collective
2: Tradition, Style, Nostalgia, and the Kitsch
3: Getting the Word Around
4: "Where is the Donkey Show Mr. Mariachi?" Reterritorializing
TJ
5: Producers, DJs, Fans, and the Performance of Nor-tec
6: Dancing with Desire
7: Nor-tec and the Postnational Imagination
Bibliography
Alejandro L. Madrid is a musicologist and cultural theorist whose research focuses on the intersection of modernity, tradition and globalization in music and expressive culture from Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2005 Alejandro received the prestigious Casa de las Américas Musicology Prize. He is Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latino studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
"In this brilliant study of a local culture's transnational
dynamics and dimensions, Alejandro Madrid reveals how radical
changes in contemporary commerce and culture are imbuing old
identities, borders, and boundaries with new meanings."--George
Lipsitz, author of Footsteps in the Dark
"The Nortec Collective stands astride the US/Mexico border creating
an art of hope and adaptation. This music represents all that is
possible along the new frontier, and it has fomented a movement of
art and film and literature that is unique in the world. Alejandro
Madrid's masterful study of this brilliant hybrid stands as one of
the important texts in the history of the new, shining,
borderlands. Nortec sings, 'Tijuana makes me happy.' This work
makes us
happy to be alive."--Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Devil's
Highway and The Hummingbird's Daughter
"Alejandro Madrid is an amazing thinker. His fresh theoretical
insights are synthesized from a broad base of knowledge and
disciplines. This work will appeal to anyone interested in border
studies and contemporary societal trends, as well as those with an
interest in contemporary music and activism through music."--Brenda
M. Romero, Associate Professor of Musicology and Ethnomusicology,
University of Colorado
"Alejandro Madrid has brilliantly captured Nor-tec's burst into the
twenty-first century. This is an innovative book that effectively
balances traditional with virtual fieldwork, musical analysis with
a cultural-oriented approach, and theoretical reflections with
empirically grounded investigations. Madrid's critical mind and
analytical skills meet the ingenuity and eloquence of the Nortec
Collective."--Helena Simonett, Vanderbilt University, author of
Banda: Mexican Musical Life across Borders
"Nor-tec has spawned audio imitators, Volvo ads, t-shirts, and
indie films, popped up everywhere from art installations to MTV and
HBO, and now Tijuana's first-next-big-global-thing finally has its
own full-scale scholarly book that lends a critical ear to border
beats. With a focused and serious mix of theory, interviews, and
lots of listening during long nights in Tijuana clubs, Madrid has
done the music and the scene a great service by unraveling its
histories and dissecting its meanings for fans and scholars
alike."--Josh Kun, University of Southern California, author of
Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America"
"Alejandro Madrid has in this book skillfully accomplished to make
us understand the Nortec's collective past, its origins and
development throughout its ten years of existence. Nor-tec Rifa!'
is fundamental for all people interested in Mexican music and/or
electronic dance music." --The World of Music
"Madrid's analysis provides a good case study to consider border
studies as a dynamic theoretical tool for the study of identity as
a transient and changing strategy used to navigate and survive the
complexity of dominant ideologies." --Latin American Music
Review
"Expertly researched and well-written...Alejandro Madrid's engaging
study indeed does much to reveal the dynamic complexity of early
twenty-first century Tijuana--and US-Mexico borderland culture--as
a whole." --Popular Music
"Nor-tec Rifa! is a reference for studies that deal with the
construction and negotiation
of individual and collective identities in liminal contexts and
under conditions of globalization. It is also an important
contribution to electronic dance music studies, hybrid music
cultures, and postcolonial Latin America." --Yearbook of
Traditional Music
"Without a doubt, this is the best, more serious, and intelligent
book about the party scene in Tijuana. Other people had tried it
before, but most of them ended up drunk and saying stupidities. On
the other hand, this book, encapsulates the media and intellectual
discussions that Nortec has generated." --Heriberto Yepez,
Replicante
"An important work...Nor-tec Rifa! is one of the few existing
interdisciplinary case studies that delves into the multicultural
connections of dance music, technology, the Internet, and
Mexican-American border cultures. Hopefully, it will prop open the
door for more to follow." --E-Misférica
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