South of the Bravo

An event of considerable importance to the juke boxes of the U.S. Southwest occurred last week when Decca recorded Ramon Armengod, Mexico's Bing Crosby, singing Amor, Amor, Amor, Mexico's "new song." It is a cancion bolero with a lovely, lazy melody and a fetching Franz Lehar swipe at the end of the middle part, and Senor Armengod has the voice to sing it bravely. But Amor, Amor, Amor is not new. It has been played south of the Bravo (Rio Grande to Yanquis) for several years. It is called new by Mexicans because, with the fierce competition among composers for the few outlets Mexican music publishing offers, a song has to be very good to be heard at all, and Mexicans tend to prolong the youth of their limited number of songs almost indefinitely.

Polyglot Decca, which prides itself on being the Thomas Cook & Sons of popular music, takes especial pride in its Mexican list, and well it might. Mexican popular music is like Mexico itself: vivid, varied, unpredictable, exciting. It comes in many forms. There are many kinds of canciones (songs): fox (fox trot), ranchero (cowboy), bolero (slow rumba), corrido (fast one-step), etc. There are also polkas and a number of varieties of locality songs and dances. Their general characteristic is ingeniously broken time.

Mexican music can be rendered very well and very badly, but most of it has a seriousness and integrity that make a great deal of the U.S. radio's outpouring sound a little silly. And most Mexican music has that hallmark of all deeply traditional music: it sticks to the ears and can stand infinite repetition. A small, sound library of Mexican records would include some or all of the following songs and artists:

> Los Rancheros are the outstanding trio of male singers and guitarists. These three small-town boys went to Mexico City to get in the movies, took to singing together in nightclubs in gold-braided black charro (cowboy) costumes. They have since broadcast for NBC, played at Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall, are now in Argentina. To delicate touching of the guitar and impeccable rhythm they add three fine voices in almost tangent harmony. When they are sweet they are very, very sweet, as in the sad, melodic Hace Un Ano (A Year Ago), Las Mananitas (Mornings), Adids Mariquita Linda (Goodby, Beautiful Mariquita). Their liveliest number is a ranch song, El Toro, full of shouting, whistling, guitar-beating and mooing. They are Decca artists and they do not appear to be capable of doing any song badly.

> Mexico has also produced a pair of torchy ladies who vocalize in the best black-velvet-gown-and-chiffon-handkerchief manner. One is Adelina Garcia, happily represented by a sad ballad called Desesperadamente (OKeh). The other is glamorous Elvira Rios, familiar to Man hattan nightclubbers. Her cello-voice throbs best on Incertidumbre and Vereda Tropical (Decca).

> Sprightlier female vocalizing may be heard on Que Puntadas (What a Flirt), sung by Lucha Reyes, a personality girl who works for Victor.

> Traditional Mexican farewell song is the lament La Borrachita (The Little Drunkard), sung by Cuatitas Herrera on Decca.

> There are stacks of records by the omnipresent Mexican street bands, the mariachis. Most of it sounds best on the streets, is crudely executed, poorly recorded. Recommendable is the great sectional song, Guadalajara, by Mariachi Tapatio (Victor).

> For purists who want to hear how Mexicans play their guitars in the little cantinas beyond the railheads and up the barrancas, General Records has issued an album called Indian, recorded on location by John H. Green.

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