![]() ![]() He wrote hundreds of such songs, and his sparse prose backed by the hard-charging simplicity of conjunto norteño makes every Chalino tune a three-minute Western. Yes, Chalino sang about the drug trade, but his main muse was los valientes-“the brave ones,” the wild men of rural Mexico whose exploits were immortalized in corridos and makes them kindred spirits to Stagger Lee, NWA’s Dopeman, and other musical anti-heroes. ![]() But that’s like saying the Beatles were a bar band. Since his assassination after a concert in Sinaloa, what little American coverage Chalino has received has reduced him to a writer of narcocorridos-drug ballads. Yet despite this outsized influence, a search shows no mention of Chalino this year in the English-language media, nor anything substantial at all on influential Latino millennial sites. He’s no mere singer: as I wrote in OC Weekly earlier this year, “He’s the most influential musician in the United States of the past quarter-century-no one comes even close.” Modern-day regional Mexican music is just one Chalinillo (Chalino imitator) after another, as everyone tries to reproduce his swagger, his rough voice, and even how he wore his Stetson to no avail. 2017 is coming to an end, and the English-language media ( besides me) has yet to write a word about the 25th anniversary of the murder of Mexican balladeer Chalino Sánchez.
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