Page 132 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

CULTURAL FRONTS

being Mexican in the truly difficult, marginalized position outside their home-
land. For more than twenty years, the songs of Los Tigres del Norte have
functioned as a memory reservoir for hundreds of thousands of poor Mexican
immigrants – one of the lowest positions in the American socioeconomy
(Trueba 1998). With only gradual transformations of their physical appearance,
musical skills, and performances, Los Tigres del Norte, like Ricky Martin, are
products of big cultural organizations. Sony Music is making very good profits
in the global market from both. A large share of the total sales of ‘Latin music’ is
linked to the growing buying power of the ‘Latino community’ in the USA.
Los Tigres del Norte were in fact quite ‘famous’ long before Ricky Martin,
but they still share one thing with him: they are famous in their respective
dominated zones in the cultural field of popular music.
To help illustrate the point I am making here, I will now quote some readers’
reactions to a Time magazine (24 May 1999) cover story about Ricky Martin
and the Latino pop music explosion. First, two opinions from the ‘top’:

I don’t know about Martin’s music (I’m a Mozartian), but it’s nice for a
change to see a pop singer who doesn’t look as if he came out of a
garbage dump.
(Ray Damskey, California)

I recall reading in Time about Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and other
trend-setting singers, but somehow Martin just doesn’t fit into the
same class as these cultural icons. I saw Martin’s ‘break-through’ per-
formance at the Grammys and I found it repulsive. Is this where music
is today? Can I become a musically successful by wearing tight clothes
and dancing? I think we’re being fooled.
(Ben DuPriest, Atlanta)

And one from the ‘bottom’:

Martin is an example of a person who persevered and worked hard to
attain his dreams. But most important, he and singers Jennifer Lopez
and Marc Anthony are examples of the duality of cultures that His-
panic youngsters face every day as they grow up in a bilingual and
bicultural environment. I’m glad that my kids have several role models.
(Vivian Alejandro, Tucson)

Studying cultural fronts implies a search for and construction of successive
changes and transformations of cultural agents and the modulating stakes of
different positions they occupy over time. Construction of a cultural front can
operate as a useful methodological strategy once we define the limits of the
study. For instance, the focus could be the transformation of specific, localized
musical tastes of Mexican immigrants into fandom for nationally renown artists

121