BANDA

I wrote this during an extended stay in Mazatlán a few years back.

If you have been under the impression, as was I until recently, that the three big ‘taboo’ conversational topics were sex, politics and religion - you don’t live in Mazatlán or, if you do, you haven’t voiced – to a group of two or more - your opinion about that indescribable phenomena - Banda music. (Pronounced bahndah, for those lucky enough to not know.) During conversations regarding this subject I have wanted to change the topic to sex, politics or religion to throttle back the intensity and passion, possibly avoiding a heart attack or two.

Talking about Banda is like discussing Mexico. People either love it – “Wonderful people, amazing beaches, fabulous food” - or they hate it – “Too hot, too humid, unsafe, can’t drink the water, trash everywhere.”

My exceedingly unscientific, casual survey of gringos concludes that most of ‘em would not be displeased if todays’ banda music revolution were to contract a deadly disease and expire in an IMSS hospital bed – no disrespect to IMSS intended. Yet a few gringos staunchly, and passionately, defend banda as a ‘tradition’ and a part of the historic culture of Sinaloa – the heart of banda music and the place of its origins.

My learned friend, Roberto, informs me that Banda music has undergone drastic changes in the past twenty-five years. Indeed, I remember listening to ‘Banda’ music in Mazatlan twenty-five years ago and it didn’t make me want to throw beer bottles at the band. Back then it was mostly acoustic, of course, and not often vocalized. There were lyrics – just not sung. It was ‘country’ music – ‘campesino’ music. Think Kenny Rogers (who, by the way, was crooning from the sound system last time I went into Natural Besa for organic eggs – go figure?) or Buck Owens or Hank Williams. I heard some of that historic banda a few days ago escaping from an old fixture of a restaurant near the mermaid statue on Olas Altas. It was OK. Hank Williams was never my favorite, yet I could listen to him without developing an aneurysm.

Legend has it that Banda originated in a place near Villa Union called El Recodo, or “El Lemon de los Peraza” as basically a ‘ranchero’ type music. Styles appear to have evolved, fairly recently, into a couple of ill-conceived stepchildren, or grandchildren, who were looking out the window during most of their music and social sciences classes. One represents the slick production of music, and music videos of the “high-end” banda - which began when banda wound its way into night clubs and discos - where many songs now are stories of bad hombres with many beautiful wicked women at their beck and call, drugs, guns, and wasting your competition. The other is the “‘beach banda’ bands that materialize in front of the Costa De Oro hotel just as you are beginning to nod off in your chaise lounge by the beach wall at the pool; or the Los Flores Hotel right about the time a local diva is launching into a heart-wrenching rendition of “The Way We Were” on karaoke night; or at La Corriente on the beach when you are just settling into your table, have your first drinks in front of you and want to have a quiet romantic conversation. Words cannot describe the feeling of being jolted out of your pool-side reverie, a budding singing career or the perfect intimate setting (where speaking softly and sincerely is rather important) by a cacophony of instant sadistically loud and acrimonious noises and reverberations pelted at you, uninvited, searing your eardrums - offered as musical entertainment. (Beach banda more closely resembles the original banda in that it is “acoustic” - for lack of a better description.)

Beach banda, as I call it, and as my Mexican friend sees it, is mostly made up of guys who cobbled together a few instruments and/or musicians necessary for the craft, practiced in the back yard for a few hours - until they drove all the local dogs, cats and chickens into the hills - then decided to go out and share, for a price, their orchestrations. Some gringos (I would never dare say who) think beach banda sounds like a flock of parrots and a flock of seagulls simultaneously colliding into each other and a hollow tree over a herd of flatulent elephants while flamingos are trampled underfoot.

At one beach-front restaurant that is a permanent local fixture, I recently noticed signs on the wall over the beach saying they prohibit bands from playing there. Also, at every ‘upscale’ place I visit the music is melodious and the volume is such that I can actually have a conversation. That tell you anything?

A few expats vehemently defend all banda as a Mexican ‘tradition’ and tell you if you don’t like it then just go back north. “Stupid, unmindful gringo. It’s their country – you’re not here to change that.” (The number three definition of tradition at Dictionary.com is, by the way: “A long-established or inherited way of thinking or acting”. No definition of tradition proclaims it as necessarily “valid.”) Interestingly, if you speak those gringos of other Mexican ‘traditions’ like tossing garbage anywhere, countless stray dogs and cats spicing up the neighborhoods, people living at the dump, a beach that looks like the dump after a holiday, or perceived inadequate fire protection (not even delving into other, more highly charged ‘traditions’ such as legal prostitution and mistresses prevalent in society) many are quick to suggest that those situations need to be fixed, or changed. What? Change situations – traditions - that have been going on here for years? Oh, right - it’s a personal judgment.

If you want to improve any circumstance (‘tradition’) here in Mazatlán that you think could use some help – to make a neighborhood, the city or the world, a better place - I’m not going to tell you to stop screwing with a tradition and if you don’t like it go back NOB (north of the border). And banda noise pollution is a problem, especially when it’s foisted on you uninvited - kinda like neighborhood dogs are a problem when they bark and howl incessantly for hours on hours on end until 3:00 AM - even if it is a ‘tradition.’

Opps, gotta go. I think I hear my dog barking.