LOS TIGRES DEL NORTE FULL
LOS TIGRES DEL NORTE PROFESSIONAL

“When we started to sing this kind of music, everybody said we were crazy.

He aspired to communicate through his music, “to convey to people our history, our way of life, how we act and who we are.” He yearned to let the world know that what they played was more than just cheap beer-joint music-“música de cantina”-that people with good taste looked down on.

LOS TIGRES DEL NORTE PROFESSIONAL

Jorge always thought of being a professional singer. Later, when I came to read the lyrics of these corridos, they coincided with the lyrics they had taught us.” “We would just sing them that way and we didn’t know if we were right or wrong, because we had no record or documentation to say this is the original. “They knew them all, start to finish, and they knew them by heart,” recalls Jorge. They memorized verse after verse about historic and folkloric figures such as Gabino Barrera, Lucio Vasquez, Rosita Alvirez, and Pancho Villa. Aside from commercial music, they picked up on oral traditions from the older men of their town who taught the boys old corridos about bandits and rebels, horses and heroes. At those parties they were introduced to other big-name norteño acts such as Los Alegres de Terán, as well as national mariachi stars such as Pedro Infante.

LOS TIGRES DEL NORTE FULL

Amid the static, it managed to pull in just one radio signal – a 150,000-watt powerhouse from Harlingen, Texas, which played pure norteño music, “música de acordeón.” That’s when the eldest brother heard the music of major norteño artists for the first time, groups like Freddie Gómez, Los Donneños, and Los Dos Gilbertos, who were already making waves across the border, who were known only in the United States at the time.ĭuring fiestas in the brothers’ hometown, people set up an old Victrola with a bullhorn for a speaker hung from a post and turned it up full blast.

It was the only electronic contraption of its kind in town, and nobody was sure it would even work, considering the area’s hilly terrain. Jorge, the eldest son, born in 1954, still recalls one of the biggest events in the life of his little town-the day his grandmother brought home a Philco radio. Their parents were campesinos, small farmers who worked the land with ox-drawn ploughs. Its fame today is due entirely to its most successful native sons, who left over 40 years ago. Los Tigres’ hometown is no more than a cluster of homes surrounded by farmlands, near the city of Mocorito in northwestern Mexico. Their story is one of struggle, family devotion, charmed choices and an unwavering commitment to a musical vision. They could not have dreamed that they would eventually become known throughout the world as one of the most enduring, beloved, and critically respected bands in the Mexican norteño genre. It was the 1960s, and the brothers – Hernán, Luis, Jorge and Eduardo – were starting to perform informally as a local group.

In fact, they didn’t even have access to a radio in their rancho. The Hernández boys had no sheet music, no songbooks, no albums or tapes to guide their instruction in this rustic folk genre.

In keeping with the music’s oral tradition, they learned their first songs from older musicians in their hometown, a tiny rural hamlet with the poetic name Rosa Morada, the Purple Rose, in Sinaloa state. The four brothers who make up Los Tigres del Norte, the world’s premier Mexican norteño band, have been playing corridos since they were boys growing up in Mexico.

Los tigres del norte