Mexican rock music, often referred to in Mexico as rock nacional ("national rock"), originated in the 1950s. Standards by The Beatles, Elvis Presley, The Everly Brothers, Nancy Sinatra, and Chuck Berry were soon covered by bands such as Los Apson, Los Teen Tops, Los Twisters, Los Hitters, Los Nómadas, Los Rockets, , Los Locos del Ritmo, , and Javier Bátiz, which later led to original compositions, often in English. The group "Los Nómadas" was the first racially integrated band of the 1950s. Their lead guitarist, Bill Aken (adopted son of Lupe Mayorga, effectively making Aken the cousin of Ritchie Valens), wrote most of their original material, including the raucous Donde-Donde, and co-wrote the material for their Sounds Of The Barrio album, which is still being sold. Their 1954 recording of She's My Babe was the first top 40 R&B recording by a Latino band. In the southwestern United States, Spanish guitar rhythms and Mexican musical influences may have inspired some of the music of American musicians Ritchie Valens, Danny Flores (of The Champs), Sam the Sham, Roy Orbison, and later, Herb Alpert. Initially, the public exhibited only moderate interest in them, because the media attention was focused on La Ola Inglesa (British Invasion).
However, after the substantial success of Mexican-American guitarist Carlos Santana in the United States in the late 1960s, along with the successful development of Mexico's own counterculture movement called La Onda (The Wave), many bands sprang up. Most of these bands sang in both Spanish and English, keeping foreign commercial exposure in mind. Mexican and Chicano rock have crossed into other Hispanic groups like José Feliciano and Lourdes Rodriguez, of Puerto Rican descent.
Origins: Orchestra and Jazz
Rock activity in Mexico in the 1950s took place either in Mexico City and the surrounding area or in northern cities such as Mexicali, Monterrey, Nuevo Laredo, Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana, whose proximity to the United States gave them more exposure to American sounds.
Rock & roll music was introduced to Mexico in the mid 1950s, as musicians like Elvis Presley and Bill Haley were at the peak of their popularity in the US, and their music began to be broadcast in Mexico and covered by Mexican bands.
Except for Tijuana and Los Tj's. In those early years, the first acts that performed and recorded rock & roll in the country were not rock "bands", but rather orchestras that combined jazz sounds with the new genre. Gloria Ríos, an American-born actress and lounge singer, is often credited with introducing rock & roll music in Mexico. Born in Texas in 1928, Ríos arrived in Mexico in 1944 and began recording in 1955 with many musicians (and their orchestras), such as Héctor Hallal, Jorge Ortega, Pablo Beltrán Ruiz, and most importantly, with Mario Patrón and his Estrellas del Ritmo. Many of her recordings were covers of songs by Bill Haley and Elvis Presley, but with Las Estrellas del Ritmo she also recorded "La mecedora" in 1956, a song composed by Mario Patrón, which was said to be the first original song of Mexican rock & roll. Ríos became very popular at the time due to her starring roles in films like "Las locuras del rock and roll" (1956) and "La rebelión de los adolescentes" (1957), but she later married Mario Patrón and in 1960 she went with him to Europe, where they stayed for many years.
This caused Ríos to be quickly forgotten in Mexico, as the new golden age of rock & roll was starting there and new bands claimed to be the ones who had introduced the genre in Mexico. Ríos died in 2002 at the age of 74 years old.
These orchestras soon started to lose popularity as new rock bands appeared, formed by young musicians who mostly covered American and British songs. Los Lunáticos, founded in 1956, are considered by many to be the first Mexican rock and roll band, and later other bands like Los Locos del Ritmo, Los Rebeldes del Rock, Los Teen Tops, etc. became popular. Las Mary Jets, formed in 1959, were the first all-female rock band in Mexico. Rock, as elsewhere, became tied with the youth revolt of the 1960s.
Many songs are credited as being the first original Mexican rock & roll songs, amongst them:
"La mecedora" (1956), written by Mario Patrón and recorded by his orchestra and Gloria Ríos. This is considered to be the first original Mexican rock song in Spanish. "Mexican rock and roll" (1956), written by Pablo Beltrán Ruiz and recorded by his orchestra, it's an instrumental piece. "Where Did You Get It?" (1957), written by José Luis Arcaráz and recorded in English by Los Lunáticos. Bands of the 1950s and, to a lesser degree, were often associated with the middle-class youth of Mexico. Fearing a "Moral Crisis," the PRI-controlled government imposed restrictions on rock music and films, in an effort to protect the "Buenas Costumbres," or proper family values, by "avoid[ing] noxious or disturbing influences on the harmonious development of children and youth." These guides caused any particularly "rebellious" media, including movies and rock, to conform to the PRI's Buenas Costumbres to get their work officially published. In addition, both to protect Mexico's record industry, and simultaneously discourage foreign-inspired challenges to the status quo, heavy tariffs were placed upon imported records. This combination of factors created the "Refrito" movement of the 1950s and early 1960s, where Mexican rock musicians reworked foreign songs to fit in with into the restrictions on music. One of the most popular examples is the song "La Plaga" by Los Teen Tops, a refrito cover of the Little Richard song "Good Golly Miss Molly," where lyrics featuring elements of scandal and rebellion were toned down or altered by Los Teen Tops for the Mexican market.
While many musicians of the refrito era saw success, both domestically and internationally, their music was often criticized by those on the left as "imperialist in nature," and by those on the right for still being too "rebellious," both of which would carry on into the La Onda era of the late 1960s, particularly as the Mexican youth, particularly those associated with rock, became increasingly frustrated with the government and more progressive-leaning.
Classic Rock
The 1960s are considered to be the "golden age" for rock music in Mexico; during this decade, rock groups frequently dominated the music charts and many of them became teen idols. In the early years of the decade, groups like Los Rebeldes del Rock (whose recording "Hiedra venenosa" is considered to have been the first rock and roll recording to be broadcast in Mexican radio, back in 1959), Los Hooligans, Los Locos del Ritmo, among many others, became very famous recording Spanish-language covers of American and British rock standards, as well as some original songs.
One group in particular, Los Teen Tops was very popular in Mexico and in many other countries of the Hispanic world, specifically in Argentina and Spain; their recordings "La plaga" and "Popotitos" are considered some of the most representative of the era.
The counterculture movement is generally agreed to have its roots along the USA-Mexico border, particularly in Tijuana, where the geographical proximity allowed for easier access to foreign music. Bands such as Los Dug Dugs found success covering songs by bands such as The Beach Boys and The Beatles, and soon moved to Mexico City. Other Northern bands would coalesce on Mexico City around this time, and by 1966, a cultural movement would begin to emerge around this music, incorporating contemporary aspects from American culture and fashion. This was called La Onda.
Rockeras Women rock musicians, sometimes referred to as rockeras, played a sizeable, if often overlooked role in La Onda, and Mexican rock as a whole. Bands such as Las Mary Jets, Los Spitfires, and Las Chics were the most prominent in the 1960s, though were also subject to the restrictions and regulations placed on the genre by the PRI, as well as increased social stigma for playing rock music in a conservative society. After her band's dissolution, Silvia Garcel of Las Chics reflected on this, saying of her televised performances "They wanted us to look like little girls, well-dressed, modest, neat, and decent," but that this didn't reflect their style: "We wore miniskirts, but only as part of the show. In real life, we didn't wear them[,]" instead preferring to wear the blue jeans associated with the American-influenced La Onda movement. Often times, however, the social and political constraints would prove to win out against more progressive themes, epitomized by Angélica María, who bore the title "Mexico's Girlfriend" in a social role that served as both a role model for young women and girls, and an object of enamor and adoration among men. Because of this, more rebellious rockeras were further vilified in the public eye, when compared to the pure, more socially acceptable Angélica María.
Festival Rock y Ruedas de Avándaro, La Onda
Many Mexican rock stars became involved in the counterculture movement. One of the most notorious bands from this decade was La Revolución de Emiliano Zapata, from Guadalajara, Mexico. After winning a local contest, they signed a contract with Polydor Records, and their single "Nasty Sex" was a #1 hit in Mexico in 1971, the only rock song from a Mexican band to achieve such a feat in that decade. However, after many members left the band and the Mexican government severely restricted the recording, publishing, and airplay of rock music in the country, the band (like many others at the time) changed its format and became a romantic ballad group.
The two-day Festival Rock y Ruedas de Avándaro, held in 1971, was organized in the hamlet of Tenantongo near the city of Toluca, a town neighboring Mexico City, and became known as "The Mexican Woodstock".
At that rock festival, nudity, free love, experimental drug use, profanity, the peace sign inserted in the Mexican flag and the presence of the American flag so scandalized the conservative Mexican society that the government imposed cultural curbs to La Onda, and especially to rock music. The media called the move El Avandarazo. The festival, intended to emulate Woodstock and Altamont, expected to attract a maximum of 25,000 concertgoers but about 300,000 showed up. The government helped some stranded attendees at the end of the festival by sending 300 buses.
During President Luis Echeverría's administration, the Mexican government tried to win back the country's legitimacy through populist, leftist-oriented programmes.
Most things that could possibly be connected to the counterculture or to student protests were sidelined on public airwaves by the powers that be, who feared a repeat of the student protests of 1968, an event the new government denounced. But most Mexican rock bands sang and criticized the administration in general and, more specifically, corruption, poverty and persistent social inequalities that had taken place through Mexican history.