NRR Project: ‘Mal
Hombre’
Performed by Lydia
Mendoza
Recorded 1934
3:32
I could not do better to inform the reader about Lydia Mendoza than to point them to the excellent explanatory essay by Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez at the NationalRecording Registry. For the sake of the entry, I will include my own thoughts.
Mendoza was part of a musical family that lived and traveled through the United States and Mexico, performing for poor, Spanish-speaking audiences in all kinds of venues – bars, street corners, open fields. They had a body of music, composed from different influences, that would come to be known as Tejano music.
Mendoza lived in a society almost completely cut off from the mainstream. She never learned English – she didn’t have to. She moved inside of a culture whole and entire of itself, a Hispanic culture that, still today, lives on a completely different level that is unknown to the Caucasian majority.
Lydia, a performer since the age of 12, recorded this at the age of 16. “Mal Hombre,” a dark and dire portrait of an unfaithful, manipulative lover, became her signature song. Almost single-handedly, over the course of 50 albums featuring more than 200 songs, she set down the music and poetry of the Mexican-American underclass.
The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next up: the New Music Quarterly recordings.
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