Narcocultura Review

Vol. 59, No. 3

Ethnomusicology

Fall 2015

Film, Video and Multimedia Reviews Narco Cultura. Directed by Shaul Schwartz. Produced by Cinedigm and Parts and Labor. Multiple formats. 102 minutes. 2013. Released by Cinedigm. Century City, 1901 Avenue of the Stars, 12th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90067. 424-281-5400. http://narcoculture.com/http://narcoculture.com/http:// narcoculture.com/ “We are talking about an anti system rebellion that’s making a hero out of, out of somebody that operates outside of the law. Honestly the sky is the limit, I think we can be the next hip-hop.” —Joel Vasquez, Promoter, Twins Enterprises

The film opens with a still shot of the border between Juarez and Mexico. Later it takes us into a series of snapshots of Mexico—its people, the food, and cityscapes. A boy appears walking along the border. The boy says: “They say that it’s safe on the other side, that they don’t kill people over there, but the narcos are over here. My dream is that there would be no murders here.” We are then introduced to one of the main protagonists, crime investigator Richi Soto, from Juarez, Mexico. The camera follows him to several crime investigations. We see people gather around the crime scenes crying as a result of the death of their family members. After setting the plot in Juarez and Texas, the camera transports us to a recording studio in Los Angeles where we meet Edgar Quintero, a singer from the norteño group Buknas de Culiacan, from el Movimiento Alterado. The camera then captures a conversation that Quintero has with one of his clients, who requests a corrido to be dedicated to him. Shaul Schwartz, the director of the feature film, Narcocultura, is a photojournalist who has covered the “war on drugs” in Mexico since 2008. As a portrait film that juxtaposes the lives of these two protagonists, the audience is able to build an acquaintance and empathy with both. The constant close ups of Quintero consuming drugs shames him, and contructs him as an unconcerned © 2015 by the Society for Ethnomusicology

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individual who does not care about the real deaths that occur in Mexico (because he sings of them and profits from them). Using montage technique, the filmmaker visually takes us to the different cities where these musical artists perform, such as El Monte, Compton, Atlanta, Union Grove, and Seattle. These vignettes capture the musicians performing, consuming marijuana, flirting with fans, and fan-to-fan conflict. As a technique, montage is aesthetically pleasing but provides no socio-historical or cultural context about the music performances, locations, and the people who are consuming them. The sound techniques that Schwartz incorporates demonstrate that his main argument is that narcocorridos glorify drug culture. For instance, the use of non-diegetic sound when the musician performs and sings appears to manipulate a particular reaction from the audience. In contrast, the scenes that feature the crime investigator hardly uses any non-diegetic sound, which implies more seriousness and credibility. An example of the non-diegetic sound is towards the middle of the film when Buknas de Culiacan performs in the Nokia Center, in Los Angeles, whereby the filmmaker shows footage from the live concert but removes the live musical sound to incorporate non-diegetic sound, making the viewer feel ambivalent about the performance. The main song performed and sung throughout the entire documentary is “Sanguinarios De El M1,” one of the most lyrically violent, yet most popular songs from El Movimiento Alterado. This corrido currently has more than eight million views on YouTube. During one of the performances in the film, the camera pans left to the audience and captures fans singing with subtitles translating the lyrics: “With an Ak-47 and a bazooka around my neck, cutting heads off of anyone in our way, we are bloodthirsty, respected, and we like to kill, we are the best robbers, our gang always travels in a convoy, we come bulletproof and ready to execute.” We see several shots of fans interacting with artists while using their cellphones to record the performance. After this concert, we travel back to Mexico and see a truck with multiple gunshots and a shattered window. The rapid cuts and transitions, shifting from the musical performances to the death investigations, gradually make the viewer feel disgust for the music and culture that Quintero represents. Why did the filmmaker only interview corrido artists in the United States? No musicians appear from Mexico where there are also Movimiento Alterado artists, and where the deaths he is capturing take place. Perhaps the filmmaker focused on Los Angeles because the record label company, Twiins Enterprise, is located there. (A three-part documentary about Movimiento Alterado artists in Mexico can be accessed at the following website: http://www.vice.com/ es_mx/video/alterados-y-arremangados.) The participation of these musicians in the United States, performing in venues like the House of Blues, gives them hope that one day their music will be recognized in Hollywood or mainstream

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America.These new venues symbolize a professionalization process of Mexican regional music, in which their potential to make sells is recognized. As Adolfo notes: “This music is becoming more professional. It is being produced in stores like Walmart.” He explains that, in the beginning, Walmart did not want to distribute many copies of their compact discs because they underestimated the popularity of this music and thought that they were not going to make any profit. The comparison Schwartz makes in the film between the violence in Mexico and the musical scene in several states throughout the United States is intriguing, however using this documentary in a classroom to teach ethnomusicology could be problematic because it does not address how fans of this music create and enhance the music’s cultural significance. Schwartz could have improved the musical representation of El Movimiento Alterado by including interviews from fans in the United States and incorporating footage that explains the difference between musical cultures within these different geographical locations. The only moment in the film where fans in the United States are given a voice is when one of the producers says: “Its so cool to see regular people. They go to a club, and they feel narco [drug dealers] for that night you know? The next day they have to go and work.” This comment alludes to the class status of the fans and the temporary feeling of power that they feel when they are in a nightclub and singing this music. Narcocultura is one of the best films I have seen in the past few years, and it is no surprise that it was an official selection for the 2013 Sundance Festival. In a classroom setting, the film could be used as a starting point into this musical culture, and not as a canonical reality. Narcocultura will inspire ethnomusicologists and other scholars interested in the fandom of this musical genre to make more ethnographic documentaries about why fans enjoy and appreciate this rising music phenomenon. Yessica Garcia Hernandez

University of California, San Diego

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