Now out in paperback, Elijah Wald's year-long exploration of the Mexican song genre known as corrido is the best kind of world music book. To begin with, the subject is an eye-opener. These rootsy, rural, mostly accordion-based songs have always recounted heroic tales, but in modern times, they have focused relentlessly on the drug trade. Outlaw daring has given the genre paradoxical urban appeal, even in Mexican quarters of Los Angeles, where jaunty narcocorridos now have the currency of the toughest, rawest hip-hop. Never mind your salsa and merrengue. Wald reports that Mexican bands, predominantly corridistas, account for two-thirds of Latin record sales in the United States.

But beyond sexy and surprising material, Wald's book soars thanks to his engaged research method. Wald flies, drives, hitchhikes and takes busses through much of Mexico and the American southwest. Because this is territory he previously knew a little, but not well, his writing combines the freshness of discovery with the depth of serious, sustained attention. Because the corridos themselves have such deep and varied ties with the history and contemporary lives of Mexicans everywhere, the book is about much more than music. It is a portrait of an extended society, the hidden lives of villagers, the chaos of cities, the eccentricities of travelers and musicians, and the struggles and challenges faced by Mexicans who have made their way north of the U.S. border. As Wald puts it in his introduction, "The corrido world provides a street-level view of all the surreal juxtapositions of modern Mexico: the extreme poverty and garish wealth, the elaborate courtesy and brutal violence, the corruption and craziness, sincerity and mythologizing, poverty and excitement and romance." The adventures that follow confirm all that and more.

Los Tigres del Norte's 1972 hit "Contrabando y Traición" (Smuggling and Betrayal) marks the start of a wave of drug-trade-related corridos, but the genre of heroic tales, often glamorizing the lives of revolutionaries and non-drug outlaws, goes back a century earlier. Wald begins with Los Tigres, the top-selling Mexican band of the past decade, but his travels take him to quiet backwaters where past and present corrido composers live and work in relative obscurity. Amid the "narco chic" of the Sierra Madre mountains, he encounters Paulino Vargas, one of the genre's most respected composers. A brief stay in prison in the late '60s gave Vargas the insight he needed to jump on the narcocorrido bandwagon a few years later. Wald guides us through the texts a few Vargas hits, pressing the composer for recollections, and revealing the way a good corrido has to start with true story and then "add something."

From there, Wald settles into the heart of Mexico's drug industry, the Pacific coast province of Sinaloa, a land of "medieval fabulists," he says. Wald delves into paintings, novels, and poems as well as old and new corridos, to catch the surreal vibe of this zone where everyone lives from the drug trade, but few actually use drugs. The Sinaloa chapters explore the real roots of the narcocorrido, from the late master and prototype gangsta corridista Chalino Sanchéz to the young, and massively popular band Los Tucanes, which Wald tracks down in Mexico City.

Chapter after chapter, Wald tirelessly traces various corrido emanations, criss-crossing the U.S. border and finding the genre in various states of vigor and turpitude from the politically turbulent Chiapas state in southern Mexico, to sleepy corners of south Texas. There are a lot of names to keep track of, but Wald's keen ear and eye guarantee that the stories and characters remain engaging, even if you lose track of the corrido lineages.

The L.A. encounters are especially provocative. Ever since Chalino Sanchéz was murdered under mysterious circumstances in 1992, his rough voice and crusty recordings have taken on cult status, triggering a massive rise in corrido popularity, especially here. L.A. producer Pedro Rivera owned most of the rights to Chalino's recordings and so was well positioned to cash in on this phenomenon, but it doesn't stop there. Pedro and his two children have gone on to become successful corrido recording stars, prompting Wald to dub them a "gansta corrido dynasty." At many points in this convoluted tale, contradictions emerge around this folksy music with violent, druggie lyrics, perhaps none so poignant as the fact that the Riveras get invited to perform at L.A. high schools as a cultural act. Young Jenni Rivera--the "First Lady of the Corrido"--has never approved of drug use, and would rather sing about love, but she has no problem giving the market what it demands. Describing a visit to Lakewood High, she tells Wald, "They just thought we were a folkloric group or something like that."

I am not up on the music Wald is writing about, but from the little I've heard, the story may have more crossover appeal than the corridos themselves. Just the same, this superb, ground-breaking book deserves a companion CD, to satisfy the reader's inevitable curiosity if nothing else. And although I have not heard it, there is one: Corridos y Narcocorridos , on Fonovisa SDCD 6161.

Editor's Note: Narcocorrido was published in the fall of 2002, and in paperback in January 2004. As we begin to collect book reviews for www.afropop.org's young book section, we are concerned with the quality and relevance of books, not necessarily their timeliness. With that in mind, we encourage visitors to submit reviews of any and all pertinent books for this space.

Contributed by: Banning Eyre for www.afropop.org