BAND OF BROTHERS

Los Tigres del Norte give norteño music its day at the Santa Barbara Bowl

By Josef Woodard
NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT

Summer concert seasons at the Santa Barbara Bowl have, at least to some degree, addressed the sizable Latino music audience in the area, bringing in top artists from Mexico and other points in Latin America.

Even so, the hugely-popular force that is norteño music hasn't quite gotten its day. That lack was addressed by the arrival of the best-known norteño band, Los Tigres del Norte, making a triumphant Bowl debut on Sunday night.

Thanks to them, this deep, festive regional sound, which sprouted along the Texas-Mexican border and is still heard widely on Spanish-language radio -- including Santa Barbaran airwaves -- shook the Bowl beautifully.

For habitual Bowl patrons, comparing concerts becomes an avocation. By loose observation, the Los Tigres concert had the broadest age range, from infants to grandparents -- and possibly great-grandparents. A more arguable point is that the band's energetic two-hour-plus show was the most consistently dance-provoking of the season so far.

The band's insistent two-beat spirit, fueled by leader Jorge Hernadez's accordion melodies and limber riffing, kept coming at a crowd that knew most of the words and didn't mind singing along, even if a bit out of tune.

Old favorites like "El Mojado Acaudalado," "El Circo," "La Juala De Oro" and new songs like "No Tiene La Culpa El Indio" and "Las Mujeres De Juarez" kept the crowd buzzing and wriggling. Part of the deep connection between band and audience has to do with the sentiments of immigrants longing for sounds, flavors and colors of the homeland.

Also embedded in the sometimes deceptively happy surfaces of norteño music, rooted in the storytelling form of "corridos," are tales of everyday struggles of border-crossers and anti-heroic drug runners.

The four brothers Hernandez, joined by cousin Oscar Lara on drums, hit the stage, as usual, in fancy coordinated outfits, donning slick silver-suit affairs with shiny maroon shirts. Tiger-striped patterns decorated Lara's drums and a couple of the several accordions in the musical arsenal. Colors of the Mexican flag appeared like a logo, on Hernan's custom bass and in the green, white and red theme of the flashing lights on their set.

Following the lead of bold singer, group director Jorge, this group relates easily to one another and also has no trouble literally reaching out to and interacting with the crowd.

Jorge patiently read aloud notes handed up to the stage throughout the set, and other band members signed hats and articles of clothing between songs, without missing a beat.

On both sides of the stage, there seems to be a strong awareness of the band's high-profile status in Mexican music. The set opened with a mock-radio introduction, a collage of snippets from their countless hits, up through their strong recent album "Pacto de Sangre."

They sang the "La Bamba"-like song "America," from their Grammy-winning 1988 album "Gracias America Sin Frontera," not once, but twice, pulling it out as a bonus encore at concert's end. Behind the music, a tape of the gringo announcer awarding the Grammy set the stage for that landmark moment in a multidecade career, which only seems to be ascending.

While his brothers stuck to their allotted musical roles, Eduardo played the switch-hitting utility man, moving from guitar to alto saxophone to accordion, and taking the lead vocal role on songs like the high, pealing new song "Jose Perez Leon."

The romantic minor mode purr of that song was a departure from the upbeat, polkalike norteño beat dominating the evening. By contrast, "La Manzanita" shifts into a higher gear than usual, its fast, high-powered melody sung in octaves by the brothers. It was one of many songs this night stoking dance fever in the aisles and even just in seated squirmers, present company included.

With a history dating back to the '60s in Sinaloa, Mexico, and crisscrossing the Mexican and U.S. venues from their homebase in San Jose, (alta) California, Los Tigres have built up a huge catalog of songs, as well as a kind of resilient mythology. Fashions come and go, in music on both sides of the border, but they remain an important element of the great American musical soundscape.

While they have long been deemed a supergroup in Mexican music, it is time for the group to ramp up their profile in the extra-Latino market. One of the things they struggle against is the lingering stigma separating Spanish- and English-language media and culture, an invisible and unreasonably harsh form of cultural border patrol. Music this good deserves to be heard in wider circles, regardless of stubborn marketing delineations.

On the local level, playing the Bowl was a good start.

Note: Click on the photos at the top to view full size.

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