Banda music is the soundtrack of modern Mexico, with its thumping polka beat and trumpets blasting everywhere from rural fairs to working-class Mexico City weddings. And it’s increasingly made in the USA.
Once the equivalent of country music, with lyrics about rural life sung by men from Mexico’s western badlands, it is more and more being produced in the suburbs of Phoenix and Los Angeles, and sung by Mexican Americans who grew up speaking English and listening to rock and rap.
And as U.S.-born singers gain prominence, it’s becoming more akin to gangster rap . . .
