February 2012


Banda Group

I have marveled at the popularity of banda music among young Mexicans for a while now. You hear it on the few Spanish-language music stations around here. I talked about it with a young, hip DJ in a restaurant in Mexico City.

But it boggles since it would be as if I was digging polka music when I was a younger, dumber music fan in my youth instead of  Talking Heads, The Replacements or (even younger) Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Proof of its popularity among the young, and in this case young pukes, is the rash of burglaries of schools in L.A. If you are a bolillo and have no idea how the banda sound sounds, here’s a sample from the giant stars of the genre, Banda Recodo, from its homeland in Sinaloa.

 

 

The police in Honduras are not the solution to the problem of  violence in Honduras, they are the problem.

NPR reports on the growing opposition to the violence and police corruption in Honduras. Murder rates run many times higher than those in Mexico.