PARA LAS MUJERES SENSIBLES NO HAY MISIÓN IMPOSIBLE

PARA LAS MUJERES SENSIBLES NO HAY MISIÓN IMPOSIBLE (No impossible missions for sensitive women)

Historically popular music was a transmission vehicle of female archetypes, imported from western colonialism. Corridos, rancheras, salsa, bachata lyrics traditionally draw women as earth mum (pacha mama), obedient wives, seductive, treacherous, always responsible for big humanity tragedies as Eva, Medea, La Malinche or La Llorona. This female role did not change too much with global music arriving, on the contrary the new female image is more uniform; actually MTV is defining features and characteristics of a new woman and to be different from this general canons unfortunately creates a marginalization. This essay in contrast analyzes, using different lyrics or new interpretation of classical songs (I am thinking for example in Lila Downs version of “La Malinche” and “La Llorona”) how sensitive women are re-writing stories and history. Respecting popular music traditional structure, we can find women escaping from traditional clichés or exaggerating them (Astrid Hadad) take over those stereotypes moving away from a sexist, machista paradigm. This paper is focused on Lila Downs work; she is a mexican-american singer performing her own compositions as well as tapping into English or native Mesoamerican music of the Mixtec, Zapotec, Maya and Nahuatl cultures. Subverting normal criterions she shows us another history written by table dancers (taiboleras), mole cooks (cocineras de mole) and modern heroines (Digna Ochoa).

Bibliografía:

Castañeda, Daniel. El corrido mexicano: su técnica literaria y musical. México: Editorial Surco, 1943. Chambers, Iain. "Contamination, Coincidence, and Collusion: Pop Music, Urban Culture, and the Avant-Garde." In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988. 612-18. Díaz de Ovando, Clementina. "El corrido de la revolución", La palabra y el hombre, n. 6, Xalapa: Universidad Verocruzana, 1985. Du Pont, Denise, ed. Women of Vision. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988. Eagleton, Mary, ed. Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1990. Garza, María del Carmen. El corrido mexicano como narración literaria, 2 vols. Tesis doctoral. México: El Colegio de México, 1977. Herrera-Sobek, María. The Mexican Corrido: A Feminist's Analysis. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993. Pacini Hernandez Deborah Bachata: A Social History of Dominican Popular Music. Temple University Press, June 1995 Paredes, Américo. “The Ancestry of Mexico's Corridos: A Matter of Definitions." Journal of American Folklore 76 (1963): 231-235. Reyes Matta, Fernando. "The 'New Song' and Its Confrontation in Latin America." In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988. 447-60. Simmons, Merle E. The Mexican Corrido as a Source for Interpretive Study of Modern México (1870-1959.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957