Sandra Barrera
February 19, 2002

In neighborhoods across Southern California, regional Mexican music is often heard blaring from boom boxes.

And they're not just listening to Vicente Fernandez - the crowned king of ranchera music - whose sentimental songs about his love for Mexico drew scores of people to the Universal Amphitheatre for three shows last November. They're listening to locally produced corridos - Mexican ballads about the issues or events of the day - by home-grown artists such as Jenni Rivera.

The 32-year-old Long Beach native, known in regional Mexican circles as the First Lady of Corrido, was selling her cassettes at swap meets and mom-and-pop stores before she started to get booked at clubs. Today she is among the freshest young voices in regional Mexican music, which, despite its huge popularity and sales, often goes unrecognized in the musical establishment.

I've been through a whole lot in my life, Rivera says. She was wed and a mother by the time she finished high school. Her husband was opposed to her going to college and working, which she did anyway, earning a certificate to practice real estate.

When Rivera's marriage fell apart, she was 8 months pregnant with her second child. Both she and her 4-year-old daughter were living in a garage at the time when Rivera began to write corridos about strong women.

I think that really shocks people because nobody sings about things like that, Rivera says. Female artists in our culture tend to sing love ballads, but I wanted to bust that stigma. I wanted to be real.

The favorite

Rivera's accurate and convincing stories of the street have grown in popularity among fans of regional Mexican, hands down the best-selling Latin music genre in the United States.

The latest figures from the Recording Industry Association of America show that in the year 2000 regional Mexican accounted for 51 percent of all Latin music sold in the United States - a sum totaling more than $600 million. Its more fashionable cousins, Spanish-language pop, which includes rock, captured 33 percent of the market, and tropical, 16 percent

new corridos originate in the streets, where artists such as Rivera attract followers with their stories - sometimes true, sometimes made up - about women of cunning like La Chacalosa or Jackal Woman.

Her adventurous tale of a drug lord's daughter on the run from the law is what Rivera calls a narcocorrido. A narcocorrido can be likened to gangster rap.

It's like honoring the bad guys, which is not the best thing to sing about, but it's a reality for a lot of people out there that live this way, Rivera says. So why not sing about it and make a lot of money while you're at it?

Because of the subject matter, corridos have been banned from many radio stations' playlists. One exception is the Burbank-based Que Buena (KBUA 94.3/105.5 FM).

The station is one of the biggest promoters of regional Mexican, recognizing the most popular artists at its annual Premios Que Buena. Late last year, the sold-out event filled the Universal Amphitheatre. KBUA program director Pepe Garza says the acclaimed corridos artists probably never will make it to the nomination phase of the Latin Grammys.

But lucky for us we can still have our night where the whole world arrives in their minks and limos and Rolls Royce because nobody else is looking this way, Garza says. And thank God so we can live happily ever after in our own little world.