Here's a bit from Lawrence Downes' feature article, "In Los Angeles, Songs Without Borders," from the Travel section of this Sunday's New York Times (August 16, 2009):

"In clubs, bars, swap meets and concert halls, from car radios and ringing cellphones, you will hear corridos, old-time folk ballads in the banda and norteño styles. 'Corridos are part of the literature of the common people,' wrote Chris Strachwitz, who founded Arhoolie Records and has spent a lifetime collecting and studying traditional Mexican music."

And this a little further down:

"For armchair travelers, Arhoolie Records (www.arhoolie.com) has a vast corrido catalog. You can also explore the Frontera Collection (frontera.library.ucla.edu) to which Chris Strachwitz, the head of Arhoolie, donated tens of thousands of 78 and 45 r.p.m. records. The collection is being digitized and made available to the public online, which can put you in corrido heaven for years and years to come."

Find the whole article, some musical example and a slideshow here:
http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/travel/16corridos.html

Labels: folk music, Frontera, Mexican music, press

Labels: Frontera, UCLA

Los Tigres del Norte, the UCLA Chicano Research Center, the UCLA Digital Music Library and the Arhoolie Foundation are holding a press conference on March 26th at 10 AM. This event, to be held on the UCLA campus, celebrates the completion of digitizing part I (over 32,000 recordings from 78 rpm discs) of the Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican-American commercial recordings dating roughly from 1908 - 1958 (or the end of 78s). The Frontera Collection and UCLA's Frontera website was mentioned in Billboard Magazine's on-line business column.

Labels: Frontera, Mexican music