Episode 19 - Narco music, Ola Onabulé and turf wars
In this episode Steve brings together a studio writing session with Ola Onabulé and members of Hackney Colliery Band, a deep dive into AI, groove and odd time signatures, and a trip to Mexico (via trumpet) to explore corrido and narco music. The new HCB x Ola track becomes a case study in how human quirks, polyrhythms and lived experience clash with the tidiness of machine-made music.
From there Steve unpicks how corridos function as storytelling, propaganda and resistance; how musical turf wars play out between authenticity, commercialism and violence; and what it means to make a playful diss track aimed at other music podcasts in the exaggerated spirit of cartel ballads without cosplaying the reality.
What we cover
Writing with Ola: Building a shared language in the studio, odd metres that feel natural, and lyrics about hacked souls not hollow tropes.
AI vs humans: Why messy, specific collaborative sessions are still miles away from what current AI music tools are doing.
Corrido & narco music: History, regional styles and the uncomfortable overlap between documentation, glorification and marketing.
Turf wars & genre boxes: How HCB and Ola resist being pinned to one marketable tag.
Diss track experiment: Making a tongue-in-cheek corrido calling out lazy music podcasting as a way to stress-test the form.
Further listening & links
Full Transcript
Verbatim transcript, reflowed for readability only. No wording edits.
Hello, my name is Steve Pretty. I'm a musician, composer, and performer from London. And welcome to my podcast, Steve Pretty on the Origin of the Pieces. This is the show that helps you to hear, understand, and enjoy music in new ways. Hello, everyone, great to be back again. Little bit of a delay since the last episode, as I mentioned last time. It's a busy time. This is my first time doing the podcast over the summer because I set this up last October. So the summer is a busy time for me and many musicians. So yeah, excuse the slight delay. But we've got a bumper show coming up today. Before we talk about that though, there's a couple of little bits of admin business to get through. The first of which is that I'm delighted to announce that I am doing some live shows. I've got some really fun live podcast recordings coming up. One at a festival in August, a brilliant festival called Into the Wild. And having just done my first live podcast recording at a festival, also a festival a couple of weeks ago, which I'm gonna talk about in future episodes. I am really looking forward to that one. That's on the 23rd of August, Into the Wild Festival. And after that, I have got a very special show indeed. And that is because I am back at Wilton's Music Hall. I was there in January doing my first ever live podcast recording there. And that was a super special night. You can watch the whole thing on my Patreon. But I had Valeria Clark on Harp. I had the Hackney Colliery Band Rhythm section. I had Chris Lindtott, the Astronomer from Sky At Night. And I had the Filament Choir. It was a really incredibly special evening. Really very varied, very fun. Everything I hope that this podcast is as well. But I am doing another one on the 30th of November. I've got some special discount tickets just for podcast listeners. You have to go to my Patreon and sign up. You can sign up for free, completely free to sign up. Or you can pay me £1 or £5 a month. Or indeed anything you want per month to help fund this show. And if you sign up, you'll see there that there's a post with a special offer code. And that is for best available tickets anywhere in the house for £15. And I've tried to keep the price as low as possible because I know that it's a difficult time for lots of people at the moment. I'm not going to announce who I've got on quite yet. I'm going to sort of tease that out over the coming episodes. But believe me, you want to be there because there is some absolute royalty, music royalty and even comedy royalty. So, yeah, do make sure you get tickets for that 30th of November. If you go to my Patreon, you'll see the offer code there. Sign up for the Patreon for free if you like, or you can give me £1 or £5 a month to help make this show. I'm going to be doing all sorts of new stuff on Patreon in the autumn. Once this summer is out of the way, I've got all sorts of plans there. So now is a great time to sign up. There's going to be more ticket offers. There's going to be some freebies. There's going to be some chances to hang out online and in person. So yeah, do sign up for the
Patreon. If you go to originandthepieces.com, you can sign up for that and get your offer code. But meanwhile, please stick in your diaries 30th of November at what I think is one of the most beautiful venues in the entire country, Wilton's Music Hall in London. Now, if you missed the last episode, episode 18, do go back and check that out. I talked about the First Light Festival where I was doing a lot of different gigs as artist in residence at that excellent festival in Suffolk. And of course, had a long chat with Geoff Miller about the serpent, that fascinating early hybrid of a kind of woodwind and brass instrument that was really interesting. And again, the whole video is available on Patreon if you want to see what the serpent looks as well as sounds like. It's quite an intriguing instrument. And then I talked to the Lowestoft Longshoremen about sea shanties and about their origins in the Caribbean and how these tunes from all over the world have come to be sung on a beach in Suffolk. So do go back and check out episode 18. Coming up on today's show, I'm going to be talking to Ola Onabulé, who is an amazing singer, songwriter, soul singer, predominantly. But we talk about all of the other aspects of his work as well. Ola and I, and Luke and Ollie from Hackney Collery Band have written a new tune, which is the brand new single from Hackney Collery Band. So I'm going to be playing that tune out and playing a full interview I did with Ola. We touch on all manner of different things. We touch on AI, we touch on the songwriting process, and we discuss in this kind of entertaining noises section, we discuss how he uses his voice to get those beautiful soulful tones out. And then after I speak to Ola, we go over to Mexico because I'm finally ready to reveal my findings about Corrido, the Mexican style. I speak to a trumpeter from Mexico, who I've worked with before over here on a Mexican project. And yeah, then I make a piece of Corrido music, kind of. So do stay tuned for that. My name is Ola Onabulé. I'm a singer, songwriter. I dabble in studio stuff. I love tinkering with all the beautiful gear. And I try to bob and weave around genres and not get stuck in any of the bogs. You know, make sure I exist on all the dry lands that take you between the bogs. So a lot of people start off by describing me as a soul singer, but we'll often hear that they're African influences, lots of polyrhythms, lots of playing around with melodies that don't belong in the supposed genre that I belong to, and so on and so forth. So I guess that's a quick... Well, that's an interesting starting point because we're chatting today partly because we, you and I, and the Hackney Colory band have got a new single out, right? Which is going to be coming out around the time this goes out. And that's a song that we wrote together in my studio here and with Oli Blackman and Luke Christie from the band as well. We somehow managed to cram four of us into this tiny little space. Beautifully crammed. And I think what was interesting about that process was you brought
some ideas to us. And when we were talking to you first, just by email about working together, I guess in our minds from the band's point of view, we had in mind that we'd be something more in the soul direction. Again, I guess we had made that mistake, as you say, of thinking of you as more straight ahead soul singer. But the idea you brought was, which is the starting point of the track, was very different from that, right? It's a really, really interesting idea. Yeah, I just tend to mumble onto my Dictaphone, whatever finds its way into my synapses, gets left on a Dictaphone. And I think we went through two or three of them. And all ears seemed to prick up when we got to this particular rhythm. And it was very, very easy, I thought, very easy to start working on something. Everyone was buzzing and throwing in ideas. And I remember someone saying, I think there was some consternation about how angular the odd time signature we had was. But it was such a great vibe that we turned that into a positive. We thought, OK, well, this can be the section that deals with the harshness of the topic we were talking about. And then this other section, which was more traditional soul, almost like a kind of slightly stacked vibe. And it was lovely the way they both complemented and countered one another, putting the two of them together. So yeah, very, very fun afternoon. It was amazing, wasn't it? I loved that process of working with all four of us in the studio. And it was, again, as you say, really fluid. You brought us this idea, and none of us could quite work out what time signature is in. So we, you know, where, in other words, for when we talk about this as musicians, we talk about where beat one is. And that's what kind of defines the time signature, for those who don't know. And I'll play a section of the track now. This section is actually, we worked out in 13. So this idea that you brought to us had this really nice kind of fluid groove, but in 13. We thought, wow, that's really nice and unusual. I think all of us in the band as jazz musicians, we like playing in strange time signatures, but I think I'm also very aware that there is a tendency, sometimes in some aspects of jazz, to do that almost as an academic exercise because it's quite hard to do. Of course, yes. Whereas this, just because it came just from your voice notes on your phone, and you just sort of humming it as you're walking along or whatever, it felt really natural and organic and you weren't trying to write something tricksy, right? No. No. I mean, the best part of my day is filled with trying to figure out what's this thing I can hear, what's this strain of something that's in the air somewhere, and then just chucking it down and not analyzing. So there's no analysis that I'm not trying to be academic, but I'm just putting it down, and either myself or some poor soul will have to figure out the technicalities later on. But grasping the inspiration when it comes, I think, is one of the most magical and fascinating and important parts of songwriting.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think what we've talked a lot about on this show is both the value but also the limitations of written music. And this is a really interesting case in point, because I think if you sat down with a manuscript paper or in front of a computer with the manuscript software on it, you wouldn't, oh, I certainly wouldn't come up with that kind of idea. But because you're just walking along and something pops into your head and then you develop it and then you think, oh, I should record that. Then that process of retroactively getting it down onto paper so that you can pass it on to a band is that's the process. That's one way of doing the process anyway. And certainly I like to work in that way as well. And I think sometimes people think of it as the other way round, you know. Of course, yes. Maybe it's an image we've grasped from movies, you know, they always picture the artist in his garret somewhere with his quill, you know, trying to figure it all out and it's all mathematical and all that kind of stuff. But of course, you know, it's still a very organic human exercise. And if I were to walk in to that studio on that day and I came up with something that was just inscrutable and cold, but clever, just through our non-verbal communication, would all have conveyed that this isn't really connecting. It's not working on a human level. Well, that's actually funnily enough, the song ended up being about that, didn't it? Because I remember you and I were talking when we were getting a cup of coffee or something about the themes for the song. And I think at the beginning of the day, this was just when I think the first public version of GPT-3 came out. And so I think it was on our minds. And I think I'd just been to an AI music seminar, I think, and my mind was full of visions of what the future of songwriting and future of music production could be and stuff. And we started talking about that, and in the end, that's what you turned the lyrics into, right? Yeah, when we went back into the room, and that's what we all had on our minds, that's what we discussed. And it is of concern. I can't remember specifically, but maybe in my mumblings, I started saying something about hacking the soul or something. And one of the other chaps, I think maybe Oli said something about hacked soul, hacking the human soul. I got it all down on my recorder and came back and put the words together once we had something to work with. Yeah, we kind of got a framework on that first day, didn't we? But actually, that thing of the hacking the human soul, the thing that leapt out to me that day was the fact that with Hackney Colliery band, we already straddle lots of genres as you do. So I think that's one of the reasons we sort of found a lot of common ground. We don't like to be constrained by one particular genre, I suppose. And that's something that was a bit of a problem, I think, when we first started and we were working with a record label. It's quite tempting to try and box yourself in. And we got to a point a few years ago and I thought, well, we either go hard into one of these genres and try and own that space and make it right. Or we just throw up our hands and say, you know what? Our strength is that we like doing all this different stuff. And that's obviously the direction we took. And that's again, that's
sort of where you're at. But what's interesting about that, I think, and this tune is that that is something that you wouldn't necessarily ask an AI to do. I think it's not an obvious thing. You know what I mean? That comes through years of developing a career and thinking, oh, God, it's a bit mad that we're doing this and this. But then getting in front of an audience and getting the feedback that, oh, no, we really like that left turn that you took in the middle of the set. If it had just been this one sort of pop covers thing that you're doing there, then fine. But you know, the fact that you've now done all these different things is something that, well, an AI I'm sure could do that, but no one would bother. Exactly. Exactly. And that's the conclusion I'm coming to is that maybe it's just ultimately going to be a very, very sophisticated covers band. Maybe that's what AI is going to end up being. Maybe it's going to be taking everything that we've done and then doing a version of. So once our Artyoune Hacked Soul is out there in the ether, it exists, then AI can come along and do a permutation of it. Maybe that's all. But I can't imagine how it would, I mean, that process is so uniquely human what we did in that room. And I always think that's the artist's job, you know, is to take people back to their most vulnerable, visceral, naked, bare sense, animal self sense. And for as long as we keep treating our voices with autotune and with all of these fault and imperfection, removing plugins and devising, then we're making ourselves very, very appealing to AI or to whatever the machine is. But the more we become fallibly, beautifully, ugly, human, messy, vulnerable selves, then the more we'll challenge it. And I think, in a sense, in the words of the song, that's what I'm trying to convey. I think that's beautifully put. And again, just the fact that this track, none of us could have predicted until we got in that room, what it turned into, because again, it's this piece of sort of polyrhythmic 13-8, kind of a sort of Afrobeat shuffle kind of thing. And then it goes into a straight ahead four-four soul. Cool. Different thing, which is again, not something that I've heard before, for better or worse. I mean, that's how people like it. But certainly trying to do something new and interesting that hasn't necessarily come before. Each of those things might have come before. But together, exactly. Re-contextualizing them. I wonder, just speaking of the polyrhythmic stuff, you mentioned earlier polyrhythms. I think I've seen you in interviews in the past talk a little bit about your Nigerian heritage. Does that come into it at all when you're writing, do you think, in an explicit way? I think so. I think when you grow up in a culture where rhythm is king, not harmony, then that's the foremost way people choose to express. And there's so much of it. You know, it's just everywhere. You see a talking drum master. His job is to literally speak through rhythm.
And the language I speak, which is called Yoruba, is a tonal language. You can say 20 different words made up of the same letters, spelt the same way, but by altering the tone, say dramatically different things, sometimes to your detriment or danger. So growing up in a place where tone and rhythm and play with it and where it's become very sophisticated, I think I was only in Nigeria for 11 years from the age of 6 to 17. But it was such formative years and I absorbed so much that when I think music, I came to music relatively late. So when I think music, I go to that place first and then have to divert myself away from it to a more palatable version of it that will suit the audience that I most frequently find myself in front of. So I think that's why I end up in that place. Often enough people think, I was working with a percussionist the other day who said, Oh, finally, Ola, you've written something in four. I wasn't trying to, you know, punish you or set you a challenge by not writing in four. It's just. Yeah, it's what it's what comes. Well, I mean, I talked about this, funnily enough, also about a Nigerian artist. One of the genre tombola that was randomly allocated to me one week was Ebo rap. Yeah. So I transcribed a piece of Ebo rap that I found and put it put it onto a djembe. And what was interesting about that, again, once you once you break down again, obviously, it was an Ebo. I don't I don't understand the language, the language per se. But I do understand the rhythm to a degree and hearing those those rhythms broken down onto a drum. You know, OK, you can you start really seeing the connections between those things. And and yeah, that that drumming that is at the heart of so much African music and by extension, therefore, so much now music from all over the world, so much hip hop, so much rock, blues. Obviously, everything has got that undertone of rhythm comes from from that place a lot of the time, I think. Yes, and and I love one of my expressions of the fact that I'm a British Nigerian, if I were being hyphenated, is I love taking six eight and and then doing three four with you, you know, doing a waltz with it and finding the relationship between the six of that is predominant in Africa with the three or the four here and doing a seven four rather than doing a four or going from a four four to a seven four or vice versa. And I love the tension and the relationship between the two. Just to break that down for a second for people who don't necessarily know what we're talking about. So when we're talking about musical beats, when we're talking about three, four and six, eight, you can divide that into groups of six basically or a group of six, what we call quavers or eighth notes. So the six eighth notes within a bar and you can divide that into two lots of three or three lots of two. And what that means is that you can also do both at the same time. So you can have one section of the band or one kind of groove playing in six eight. So in other words, two lots of three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. And you can have the other one playing in three. So here's the two, one, two, three, one, two, three. So that's dividing that into two or that's what you get.
That's what you get when you have those two things going at the same time. And that's where you get that a lot of that rhythm. And you could argue that that's where things like swing and jazz come from and all sorts of things, right? When you have that sort of like skipping tension between them. Yes, and it's very exciting and it's great to dance to. It's great to move to whether it's slow or whether it's fast. There's something about the call of that rhythm that's very enjoyable. I like playing in that particular muddy pool. Interesting. And just going back to Soul briefly, what attracted you to Soul in the first place as a singer? Stevie Wonder. The master. Yes, he was the dude back in the mid 70s when I was growing up as a kid. Someone would get hold of an album, Songs in the Key of Life, which was a double album, and it would get passed around the entire classroom and the lyrics would be poured over and the harmonies would be explored and we'd all marvel at his genius. And he was the gateway drug to the music that had gone before and other things that were beginning to happen. From Stevie I discovered Curtis Mayfield and Al Jarreau and, you know, pretty boy, what they used to call pretty boy soul singers like Wilson Pickett. That was my music, because prior to that, I'd grown up listening to Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, was the western music my father had in his record collection in amongst a lot of the African artists. So I think Stevie Wonder was my first soul love. Amazing. Well, that makes perfect sense. I just wonder if we should divert and talk a little bit about your voice, because you have an extraordinary voice. How did you discover that you liked singing so much, and I guess that you had an affinity for it? Or did you discover you had a natural affinity for it? Or is that something that has come over time? No, I sang. Everyone sang. There was always singing. Everyone would break out in song from time to time. It was an easy and frequent occurrence. So I had no reason to think there was anything unique or special going on with what I was doing. And I was prepared for law school. I come from a family of bankers and lawyers. And I never questioned the fact that that's what I was going to do. And as the firstborn son in a very traditional family of that thought, if you know any Nigerians, you know how powerfully, powerfully motivated they are about turning their kids into professionals. Doctor, lawyer, accountant, engineer, other professions. And after that is loser time. And below that is musician. And below that is musician. And I was at law school. I was studying to be a lawyer. I was in my third year. And I just happened to find myself on the West End one day walking along. And a guy was walking alongside me on the pavement. And I must have been singing or humming to myself because he turns to me and goes, are you a singer? I go, no, I'm not. He says, really? You sound like a singer to me. And we have this little kind of
friendly argument. I'm not really where I'm being kind of pleasantly complimented, but also falsely modest and saying, no, really, I'm not. And he says, well, you can hold your own as a singer. Why don't you come and join my band and I later on this evening when you've finished whatever it is you're doing. So I stopped by the Pizza Express. Yeah, I had a gig there the other night. Yeah, yeah, yeah. On Dean Street. A sort of legendary small jazz venue in Soho, yeah. Yeah. Why don't you stop by and sit in for a couple of tunes with the band and I? I did. And everyone was so incredibly generous and profuse. And I later on discovered that these guys were the dudes, you know, John Parichelli, Ralph Salmon. Steve Pearce. You know. For those who don't know, these are very well respected and well known jazz players and top level sort of session musicians on all sorts of things, films and you know, all kinds of things. And the pianist who was in the band, who was the guy who'd spoken to me, a chap called Jason Wright, would feed me stuff. He'd say, listen to this and listen to that. And he more or less was my jazz educator. Through him, I came across all the big bands, all the essentials, the Miles and the Cannonball Adleys and the Pattoochies. Al Jarreau became very important because I discovered that you can also be a part of the band, not just at the front of the band with singers like him. And yeah, that's how I found my voice. That's how I discovered that I was a singer. That's an amazing origin story. So you would have been, what, in your early 20s? Yes, very early 20s, yes. That's extraordinary, wow. And you've never sung in public, but apart from in sort of community settings? Yes, in community settings, for friends, family, that sort of thing. Wow, that's amazing. And here you are all these years later with an amazing career, playing with orchestras and bands all over the world. That's amazing. On this show sometimes we do this section called Entertaining Noises where I get people to kind of demonstrate their instruments. And I wonder if it's not putting you on the spot too much, if I might ask you to be able to demonstrate your instrument in some fashion. I guess firstly talking about your range, your vocal range, where you sit. It's quite a wide range. I'm baritone, essentially, but I can occupy a lot of space with a tenor wood. So from low to high it goes bass, baritone, tenor, right, in terms of male voices. Could I ask you to just show your range from low to high, even if it's just on a scale or whatever you like. Okay, so I can be around... That's amazing. It's incredible range. Yeah. I mean, that's that vocal range to be able to go up and down between those. And I think one of the tricky things that I guess a lot of non-singers don't necessarily appreciate is that there are different
registers, right? When you say falsetto, so that there's a kind of break between one type of voice and the next. Yes. Yes. I think the classical singers call it passaggio, which is the way you bridge from one voice, both physically. So from your chest to your throat, to your head, and also as you move through the ranges. And that's the bit that's beyond talent. Your talent is your genetic gift, your tone, your timbre, your emotional acuity, how you express emotion in singing. That bit is the, that's the bit you have to do your scales, work hard, sing frequently, use it or lose it sort of thing. Exercise the muscles, they're just a group of muscles. And essentially as a singer, you're an athlete, so work those muscles. And that's the technical bit that you have to really kind of work at. Yeah, again, when we've looked at the tension between in inverted commas, talent and work and both those things are important. But I think in popular imagination, often talent is over-emphasized versus work. You know, it's important to have a degree of natural gift, but really so much of being a performing or recording musician is work basically, isn't it? I mean, it's fun work and we call it play for a reason. It's playful work, but it's, as you say, sort of athletic work when you're a singer. Could you just briefly demonstrate finding the biting point between those two registers? Well, a good exercise for a lot of singers is doing these swoops. So, I'm going from my falsetto into my chest voice. When I get to my falsetto, you shouldn't have been drawn specifically to the moment that I transitioned from... You know, it should be fluid and smooth. Yeah, you can't... I can't hear it at all, where it just suddenly flicks over. I mean, I know that sensation myself, so I was really sort of listening out for it. And it's that smoothing that's where the work is, I guess. That's where the work is. And people will say, Oh, his voice cracked. And that usually means that, you know, they've heard that the point at which he is sliding into the next register is not smooth and it's audible. Yeah. When you sing, you obviously sing lyrics, you sing your own songs, and I'm sure the people sometimes as well. But you also do a lot of, in the tune that we wrote together, you sing just to noises at the beginning, just to syllables and throughout. And that's a big part of soul singing as well, isn't it? The non-verbal, if you like. And as an instrumentalist, obviously that's my domain full-time, basically. I'm not thinking about lyrics in the way that you have to as a singer necessarily. But I just wondered if you had any reflections as a singer on the link or separation between non-verbal singing and lyrical singing. Oh, 100%. I'm a pet owner. I've got a dog. It doesn't speak to me. And yet, through lots of non-verbal or not particularly literal words, distinct words, you know, we communicate and we can be comfortable in one another's company. So, it's part of communication and it can bolster or flavor or cast a different mood over the words spoken.
The words are just the ingredients. The noises are the cooking process, the spice. So you turn the potato into a baked potato or a chip by putting the salt and the vinegar on. And that's what the noises are. They're the condiments that make a meal. And I think they tap back into our ancient past. You know, again, maybe even our pre-linguistic past. Those noises that are somehow primal. Don't get me wrong. Of course, I love great lyrics as well. But there's something very primal about just the noise of someone emoting through music and just through their voice with no words attached. And the thing as an instrumentalist and as a, I guess, more inherently abstract musician, because I'm not able to be so literal because I'm not using words most of the time, I'm thinking about the fact that abstract music allows you to express things that go beyond words in some level that words can't necessarily express. Absolutely. And so as a singer who uses both, I suppose you're able to kind of have the best of both worlds, you know, bridge that gap. Yes, because communication is our superpower as human beings, and we will use whatever is to hand to communicate. I mean, it's the thing we more passionately want to do. And I always think Morse code is like the ultimate expression of non-verbal communication. But, you know, we started with grunts and wails and sounds of them. We went all the way through to what's the most recent amazing instrument, maybe the saxophone, you know. And then right at the end of this scale of expression is just tapping sounds on whatever it is, because by any means necessary, we must communicate. And I think people will invest in any act of communication. As musicians, we've just got to have the faith in them that they'll meet us halfway once we start the process, I always think. Yeah. Well, that's a great place to end. What an insightful thought at the end about communication and music. Yeah. So thank you so much. We've got hopefully a gig coming up in the autumn to launch the new single and new album for the Hackney Colliery band, which are tuned together as the lead single. Do you want to tell us anything else that you've got coming up that people could see? Well, I've got the gig with you guys, which I'm really, really looking forward to it. It would be great to do something with an ensemble of the kind that you guys are in the UK. I haven't done that before, so I'm excited about that. And then their dates, which are up on all my socials, Instagram, Facebook, all the lot across Europe, Germany, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and then a couple in Mexico and a couple in Nigeria. So check them out. Thanks so much, man. That was really, it's a really fantastic chat. Thank you. Thanks for asking me. Not at all. Well, it's been, it's always, it was a pleasure writing that tune with you and producing that tune together. And I hope we get to do some more at some point. I'd love to. You know where I am. I know where you are. Lovely. Thanks so much, mate.
Excellent. And my thanks once again to the brilliant Ola Onabulé. Yeah, fascinating guy and absolutely lovely bloke to work with. And of course, an incredible singer. And the gig we were talking about there is a big gig we've got coming up with Hackney Colliery Band, which we haven't quite announced yet, but we will be very soon. So yeah, watch this space for that. And of course, I'll be putting ticket offers on the Patreon. And speaking of the Patreon, the full video interview of that chat with Ola, including loads more stuff that didn't make the cut for the podcast, but is still absolutely fascinating, is also available on the Patreon. So go to origininthepieces.com and that's got all the links for the Patreon and also my mailing list and all that. So now it's been a few weeks since I was allocated Corrido by the random genre picker. For those of you who are new to the show, I have a section, most episodes where I put a list of about 1300 music genres from Wikipedia into a random list picker and it picks a random genre for me which I then spend a couple of weeks researching and ideally trying to make a track in and I have done that this time. It's taken me a few more weeks than usual but that's because I wanted to speak to someone in Mexico. Now a few years ago I did a really fun project at the Barbican in London with a producer called Mexican Institute of Sound. Pretty interesting producer and he brought some musicians over from Mexico and I had the great pleasure of playing with them at the Barbican Hall. And of course when I was allocated this genre, Corrido, from Mexico I thought I know exactly who to talk to. So I'm talking in this case to an amazing trumpet player called Alex Gonzalez. Now of course there is a bit of a language barrier because Alex doesn't speak a lot of English and I don't speak any Spanish, I'm afraid. So I've had to for the first time enlist the help of a translator. And in this case, that is a podcast listener. She came to the Wilton's Music Hall show and has become a regular listener since then. She's also the mother of one of my daughter's friends. So we're friends from the sort of school run and that sort of thing. So my huge thanks to Carmen Garcia for facilitating this chat between me in London and Alex Gonzalez all the way over in Mexico. Over to Alex. He was sharing, obviously, he is based in Ciudad de Mexico and he's working in all those different projects that he mentioned and with bands and musicians. So the one I'm not going to be able to pronounce, I think those are projects where he's working and people that he's working with and he's saying that he's also working, doing a lot of work for films as a producer. And, for example, he participated in the Coco film. Of course, I don't think when we worked together, I had seen that film, Alex, but I've since watched it with my kids and we love it. So I've been looking out for you guys and listening out for you guys, fantastic music on this film. Still, he was saying that when he met you at that time, when he was
collaborating with Coco and also he was working with Sonorama and playing music from Esquibel. And I was sharing with Alex that actually we love also at home, we love this music, not only the film, but we actually listen just to the music with my daughter. She knows all the songs. Same, same, same. Yeah, yeah. No, we love it as well. So yeah, so the genre is Corridos, excuse my pronunciation, but maybe you can just give us a very quick introduction to what this is for people who don't know anything about it. I've been spending some time listening to it and doing a little bit of research, but there's just, if you, if we can just tell us what this means when, when you say this word to a Mexican musician. Well, the Corridos in Mexico. Alex is saying that the Corridos is an old type of music. It's not new. It's not something that has come out now. It comes from the time of the Mexican Revolution, where they were singing songs for Francisco Villa and the Adelitas, and it's a way to express this battle time and revolution. So that's where it came from. So the Mexican Revolution was, what is it, in 1850, something like that. It's been around since then. And so those songs have persisted all the way through and it's still in modern form now. Yeah, it comes from the old times, but it kind of came back again and got stronger with the narco culture. So when they started to have all these different narco groups, right, obviously, there was a similar battle environment, right, and the people started to make songs and sing songs in relation to those groups, treating some of that people as heroes. In those songs, they were saying, well, I have money, I have guns, I have cars. So they were just kind of like magnifying, giving some kind of glamour, I guess, to that type. And so the Narcos meaning drugs groups, presumably drugs gangs and stuff, yeah. It sounds like it's a little bit similar to a kind of gangster rap in those terms, in terms of like glamourizing money and guns and crime and drugs. And actually, so they name them not only Corridos now, but they name them like Corridos Tumbados, which could be something like Lay Down Corridos. And it has a hip hop component on top of or mixed up with these Corridos. And he was sharing some names of people that are singing them that are known now, like Peso Pluma and Gavito Ballesteros would be two names of people, but there are many others. And so this is the kind of more hip hop sound of it. But I've been listening to lots of it and it seems like it's quite varied. So there's some that sounds more like hip hop or trap or that kind of thing. But there's also quite a lot that has, I mean, you and I, both trumpet players, and there's quite a lot of brass and other instruments you'd associate with Mexican music, guitars and other similar stringed instruments. Is that right? Right. So they are from the north of Mexico, they are original instruments from the north of Mexico. That's how the Corridos started with the Accordion and the Redoba and the Cerola. But then it moved, it progressed and evolved and it started to introduce trumpets and trombones and clarinet.
So, they started to introduce all those new instruments and those are the new Corridos, laid down Corridos. So these are the ones I've been listening to from around the 2010s. It's a very striking, strong brass sound. And I wondered, Alex, since you and I are both trumpet players and we've played in this style a little bit together, the trumpet and guitar are probably the instruments people would think of when, at least in this country, when they think of Mexican music. Trumpet and guitar and, you know, stringed instruments similar to the guitar. And so I just wondered, since Alex is a trumpet player, I just wondered if Alex could talk about the role of the trumpet in Mexican music and their instruments more generally. The trumpet in every small village in Mexico, they will teach to the kids. It doesn't matter in the north, in Oaxaca, or in the south, in Chinaloa. Every village, that's something that they do, right? They teach all these wind brass instruments to the kids, like the trombone or the trumpet. And then that is present in mariachi music, right? That also sings Corridos or the Sinaloense bands that also play. So it's present there because it's part of what they teach them since they are little. And what he was saying also is that the style they use, it requires a lot of blow and breathing and also effort to play that type of music. And make a little more effort in the muscles. So what he was pointing out is that the difference in the way they use the trumpet or they play the trumpet in Mexico is that the attack is more aggressive with the tone and they use three times more air and effort to do that. It's interesting listening to it, particularly just again focusing on the brass for a second. The trumpet is very distinctive and very powerful, but also the tuba has a crazy aggressive attack and sound. Definitely you can see that aggressive attack or that extra effort in every brass and wind instrument because obviously coming from where it comes, in these small villages where it was played in the open air in front of a big audience where there were no microphones, there was no way of holding the sound, and there were big audiences, so you have to make sure that the sound reaches everyone. Going back from the instruments for a second, I wonder if we can talk again about the role of Corridos in society because I was reading about them being associated with drugs and gangsters and this kind of thing, but also, is there a role they have in telling songs of oppression? No, no oppression, not that topic, but they either talk about this narco culture that we were discussing before, that fashion trend, that trend of narco trend, and also about love. So, they can ask someone to create a corrido for a woman, for a man, or even for a horse. Because they really love their horses. There are people asking for half a corrido, create it and then send for their horse. Amazing, amazing. That's good to know. So, the political history of them, because like with Gangsta Rap, is there an element where they can be subversive politically? Like, has there ever been an attempt to ban corrido, or are they looked down upon by the government or by society leaders because of
this association with drugs and things? So, we have these corridos related to the revolution, right? That they are focused on the topics around the revolution, like Adelita or Valentina or Cucaracha. So, those were corridos about these revolution times. Then we have the ones that are, you know, for the horses, that are dedicated to people or animals, right? And then the ones that are the corridos tumbados, which are the ones that are focused on the topics of the drugs and the cartels, all the narco topic. Those are the ones that, yes, they have had some kind of political impact, but what he was saying is that more than the government or politics is between the different guns and cartels. So, if a cartel asks for a corrido to be created, and that corrido is sunk in an area that is not covered by that gun, then a big impact and even fights, that can cause fights, because obviously those guns are covered in different areas, and you cannot sing a song from a cartel that is not from your area. So if you have a corrido that is linked to a specific gun, you cannot play it in a region that is not owned by that gun, or even play it on the radio. That's so interesting, having that political element. Part of the reason it's so interesting is maybe I haven't been listening to the same corridos, but listening to them, they sound so joyful for the most part, and fun, as opposed to things like Gangsta Rap, which have got quite an aggressive sound. I mean there's a certain aggression to the way that they're being played, the instruments being played, but it feels like happy dancing music, so it's interesting that it's used in this political way. But actually they are inside the letter, even though it might not seem obvious, there are some keywords that they might only understand. So you might think that they are referring to something, but it's referring to something else, right? So, or they are depends on who is the woman that they are talking about, right? What do you don't know that? Or they are talking about this car or this, you know, it sounds simple, but where does that car come from or is to show off, right? So is they have, there is a real message behind those plain words that only they actually know which car they are referring to and why, or what, you know, which woman and why. At the end of the day, everyone, you know, is using the music for a purpose and in a way, you know, you are used, like everyone uses the music in a way, right? And that is meaningful for that people that might not be the same, the person that is listening to it. Okay, this has been really, really interesting. Alex, in most of the episodes of this show, when the genre is chosen for me, I try to make some music in that style. So I was going to try and attempt to make something that sounds a little bit like a corrido. Now, I should say, when I do this, you know, it's not always very successful, but it's about trying to learn the style. But in the last episode, I made some music in the style of Debussy. Before that, I have done Deathgrind, so very heavy, like very, very heavy metal, metalcore music. So I'm going to attempt to try and make some music in this style. What would you, your recommendations be for how I should start this? Tips, listen to a lot of corridos. So you have already been doing that. So the number point is done.
And use the rhythm six, six, eight. So this is good. This is very good tips. Very good tips. And I wonder if I am able to make it only be a short little thing. If I can send it to you and maybe if you have any time, you are able to play on it just for a few seconds. Great. Fantastic. That's so interesting, Alex. Thank you. Before you go, I see you've got a couple of trumpets in the background. Maybe you can just demonstrate some of the techniques I should be thinking about when I'm playing. We've played together before and I learned a lot from playing with you. But I wonder if you can just show us for a second. So he's going to play different styles. Maria Chi from Sinaloa Band and also Corrido. This is Mariachi. Thank you. I will give you an example of how to play. So he played Mariachi, but he's going to now play like a Sinaloa band could play, which is with more people in the band. So it's different to the Mariachi that has less people. This is amazing, so powerful. I can almost, I almost don't need headphones, I can hear it from Mexico. You really need big, big lungs. And you know, the lips are going to suffer because you are going to be practicing and doing all these efforts. So, yeah, really strong lips. Trumpet players of the world unite, I can hear you. But one very last thing before we go, and that is I often ask guests a slightly bigger question about music more generally. And that it's not an easy question, but that is what is the point of music? He said that for him, the music is expressing and sending a positive message to the new generations. So obviously, when you have a kid in front of you, if you have to teach him something, why not to teach him an instrument, a music, rather than a gun or other wrong messages? And he was saying that music is harmony and melody, right? And that should represent society. So the harmony, the way of living, you know, in peace and everyone line, and then the melody, which is that feeling, right? That those feelings and good emotions and love, you know, and kindness between all of us. That's a beautiful, beautiful message. Alex, thanks so much. That's such an interesting chat. I'm going to go away and try and make some beautiful messages of my own, which may or may not work in this style, but it's going to be really interesting learning. So thanks so much to Alex Gonzalez. Thanks, ma'am. Perfecto. Gracias y gracias por el pod, Steve. Mucho éxito. Thank you both. Gracias. Gracias. Thank you so much, Carmen. That's really great. Take care. Well, I found that absolutely fascinating. A massive thank you again to Alex Gonzalez and Carmen Garcia for her brilliant translation skills. Yeah, I had done a lot of listening before I spoke to Alex and quite a lot of reading about Corrido. But I, you know, I learned so much just from talking to him, particularly about this kind of outlaw, narco culture aspect to it and the subversive political messages
that can be there. And so, of course, the time has come for me to step up and finally make my own piece of Corrido. But I think it's probably fair to say that I'm about as far away as it's possible to be from being a Mexican narco cartel leader. So I wasn't quite sure what to do lyrically. I also don't speak Spanish, as you've just found out. And so I didn't want to do some sort of, you know, dodgy Spanish accent. So I'm doing it as me. But I've had I've had a bit of assistance with the lyrics. AI has helped me to write some lyrics dissing other music podcasts. So it is time for me to declare turf war on other music podcasts. I'm coming for you, Joanna and the maestro. Watch out. Watch your backs. Parking my tanks on your lawn. So this with a bit of help from Google Gemini AI to write the lyrics and a lot of help from the incredible Alex Gonzalez on the trumpets. It's not me playing trumpet. I'm playing everything else on this track, but not trumpet because I've got the fantastic Alex Gonzalez playing trumpets on this. This is my own Origin of the Pieces Corrido. There we go. My first ever piece of Corrido. I don't know how accurate it was. Alex was very kind. He did say, and I quote, I'm taking this, es muy bueno and es excelente. So I'm gonna take that from Alex. Thank you very much, mate, for doing that. What an amazing trumpet sound that was. And for those of you wondering about the instrumentation, as we discussed in the interview, there's some accordion in there. There's some tuba, some really hard driven tuba. I tried to get that sound that he was talking about, that really sort of powerful, very strong attack on the tuba sound. Drums, of course, different layers of drums and several layers of different guitars. I tried to go for that kind of Mexican guitar thing. There's a trace in there. There's all sorts of different stringed instruments like that. Yeah, really enjoyed that. A few shouts and claps and all the rest of it as well, which seems to be in keeping with the style. So, really enjoyed putting that together. Would love to know what you think. I was pleased that Alex wasn't too insulted by it. But anyway, the track is available to download if you'd like, along with my full interview with Alex, of course, on my Patreon. Once again, go to originandthepieces.com and you can find all of the resources there, as well as my interview with Ola and everything else from this episode. So, it's time to choose the next genre. Now, you may remember that I do have one still outstanding. That's Tonas, which is a type of flamenco music, which I'm going to be looking at at some point over the summer. But meanwhile, I wanted to get the next one chosen. But since I played my first ever live podcast recording at a festival a couple of weeks ago, there's going to be the interview from that coming up very soon. But I also live selected the next genre in front of an audience there. So here's a little clip just to prove that I do it for real. I do not cheat this apart from when I tell you that I do. So here's the recording from Olso Festival over in the Midlands in
the UK a couple of weeks ago. Here we go. I thought what might be fun is to put in just for accountability reasons, to live pick the next genre that I'm going to look at. So I've got a couple in the queue already, but I'm just copied and pasted just before we started the show, just copied and pasted the list. And the last one in the list is yodeling. So fingers crossed I have to yodel for the next two weeks. Right. Here we go. We're on the list. Right. Here we go. So I'm going to spend my summer listening to and attempting to make a piece of tech trance. So you heard it here first. I'm actually working on a genre from Mexico called Corridos at the moment. And that's going to be, I think, on the next episode. So I was speaking to some Mexican musicians and now I'm going to be trying to speak to some tech trance musicians. Anyone? Anyone got any contacts? It strikes me as not this crowd, to be honest. Anyway, so that's tech trance is going to be the next one. If you have any contacts in the tech trance world or you can point me in the right direction to where to check some tech trance out, what to listen to, what to read about, then please do. The usual place. You go to originandpieces.com. All the contact details and everything are there. Once again, thanks for listening. Please do rate, review and subscribe. It really does help. And of course, do go to the Patreon and you can sign up for free. As I say, there's that Wilton's Music Hall discount code for the 30th of November. That's free. You can also go to the paid tiers and get all sorts of exclusive video content and audio content and everything else. So it would really mean a lot to me if you could do that. Over the summer, I'm going to be keeping going. A lot of podcasts sort of stop over the summer. I'm going to experiment with keeping going this summer, even though, as I say, I am quite busy. I'm traveling a lot, but I've got loads of great stuff in the can and I want to kind of keep things rolling. Again, the timetable might be slightly different, maybe slightly longer than every two weeks, but I'm going to aim for two weeks. So hopefully we'll be back in your ears in a fortnight's time. Again, feedback on that is really welcome. Do people listen to podcasts over the summer? I do because I tend to do quite a lot of traveling, so I've always got headphones on if I'm on a tour bus or on a flight or whatever. So yeah, I do tend to listen to podcasts and I do miss it when podcasts stop broadcasting over the summer. So let me know. If you don't listen to podcasts, maybe next summer I'll take a break. But meanwhile, I'm going to press on and keep feeding your musically curious ears with interesting musical tidbits. Meanwhile, thanks again to my brilliant guests on this episode, Ola Onabulé. Also shout out to Hackney Colliery Band. Our single with Ola is out now. It's called Hacked Soul. It's available to stream in all the usual places or download from Bandcamp. There'll be a link in the show
notes, but you can listen to the whole thing at the end of this show and of course also on my Patreon. And yeah, of course also to Alex Gonzalez and Carmen Garcia for that really interesting interview all the way over in Mexico. And especially to Alex for his amazing contribution to my Corrido track. Meanwhile, thanks again. Stay Musically Curious and I'll speak to you in a couple of weeks, bye.