Page 131 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

JORGE A. GONZÁLEZ

Figure 6.2 Los Tigres del Norte (by permission of Fonovisa)

don’t have to fulfill the aesthetic design imposed on Ricky Martin or other
performers of his genre. Here we can clearly see the constructed and edited
image of these ‘stars’, and how the structure is sensitive to the tastes of their
particular publics. The body building of Ricky Martin and his racial traits (a
white, Caucasian look), as well as good organizational image management
through public rituals and media events such as the Grammy Awards on televi-
sion, made his ‘discovery’ possible. So, a specific structural momentum and an
adequate launch platform permitted the kind of quantic spin of Martin’s per-
formance abilities to be valued from the still-marginalized Spanish market (that
is, a specific dominated position in the global social space), to the ‘big leagues’,
the global entertainment industry. 5
Ricky Martin can transcend some constraints (voice, choreography, clothing,
external appearance) that never would be structurally allowed to Los Tigres del
Norte. The ranchero band has been formed historically and structurally to satisfy
another taste, which is hard to swallow outside the structural position and
properties they actually fulfill: the musical and aesthetic taste of lower social
classes in Mexico and the same classes of Mexican immigrants living in the
USA. The songs of Los Tigres have been formatted to follow a very long
narrative tradition known as corridos. In that genre, lyrics are always sung in
Spanish. They tell stories of the pain, suffering, discrimination, and pride of

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