EVERY GENRE PROJECT - February 16 - Corrido tumbado

Genre of the Day - Corrido tumbado

Album of the Day - Atrapado en un sueño by Junior H (2020)

Some days, you walk nine miles for absolutely no reason to four different party supply shops in the area to try to find specific letter balloons. Somehow, you don't clue yourself in after the second shop doesn’t have letter balloons that the average party supply shop just doesn't sell those balloons. But you tell yourself that it helps that you listened to a Spanish album today and it’ll bolster your nascent skills because a lot of the party supply shop owners speak Spanish, but really ¾ spoke English. Either way, it provided a nice soundtrack to a half hour of those walks.

Los Angeles is a massive, sprawling city, with more neighborhoods that one could even capably explore in one’s lifetime, so getting out and about is always an exciting experience for me. Being able to reach into a tiny fraction of the city and walk around it head on, observing the uniqueness of individual blocks and houses, is always something I’m grateful for; I also feel in the neighborhood I’m in the streets have so much character, so much thought put into the landscaping and the botany, so many colors of paint adorning the houses lining the streets. In a way, it compliments what I’m trying to do with this project by broadening the range of palettes I feel I can paint with when I think of music.

Corrido tumbado is a particularly pertinent genre in the past couple of years, and that largely lies with a single superstar’s power: Peso Pluma. The Chalamet-esque star has attracted quite a bit of attention as well as massive streaming numbers in the last two years, taking corrido tumabdo from a region-specific wave to a global moment.  But the genre is rife with budding talent, as shown in today’s #1 album. Junior H got a good bit of traction with a collaboration Peso’s hit “Lady Gaga” this last year, but his presence in the genre runs deep. Corrido tumbado is a heavily youth-driven genre (did the GTA inspired cover clue you in?) among Mexican artists and Mexican-American artists, drawing on trap with irreverent, flippant lyrics, with the name of the genre literally translating to “laid back corrido.”

I found this album genuinely excellent. It’s one of the best examples around of how it’s possible to combine instrumentally rich and Important sounds to one’s regional heritage with modern takes. Junior H’s voice has a completely laid back, disattached nature that contrasts with the sheer musical passion and drive of the guitars, and the whole album is impressively just those guitars; no drum machine, no synths, no accouterments are necessary to compliment his narratives. While the album is sonically pretty homogenous, the plainspoken, casually delivered lyrics are the highlight, often focusing on the hedonism of youth: “Mi addición al motor resultaba adrelina / De chevalon me criaba mi abuelita” in “Dicen” speaks to the constant clash between the thrill seeking of youth and family values. There’s a marriage of excellent but relaxed storytelling with gleaming, masterfully woven guitar here that’s so unique; it shows how studio shine couldn’t enhance a genre as naturally derived as this.