Tigres del Norte

Los Tigres del Norte
Los Tigres del Norte at the Chumash Casino Resort in Santa Ynez, California.
Background information
Origin	Sinaloa, Mexico
Genres	Norteño
Years active	1968 (1968)–present
Labels	Fonovisa, Fama World Circles (1968-1984)
Associated acts	Zack de la Rocha
Website	lostigresdelnorte.com
Members	Jorge Hernández Hernán Hernández Eduardo Hernández Luis Hernández Óscar Lara
Past members	Freddy Hernández

Los Tigres del Norte (English: The Tigers of the North) is a norteño-band ensemble based out of San Jose, California with origins in Rosa Morada, a sindicatura in Mocorito, Sinaloa, Mexico.

The group was started by Jorge Hernandez, his brothers, and his cousins. They then began recording after moving to San Jose, California in the late 1960s, when all the members were still in their teens. They were sponsored by a local record company, Discos Fama, owned by an Englishman named Art Walker, who took them under his wing and helped them find jobs and material, as well as recording all of their early albums.

The Tigres were at first only locally popular, but took off after Jorge and Art Walker heard a Los Angeles mariachi singer perform a song in the early 1971 about a couple of drug runners, Emilio Varela and Camelia la Texana. There had been occasional ballads (corridos, in Mexican terminology) about the cross-border drug trade ever since Prohibition in the 1920s, but never a song as cinematic as this, featuring a woman smuggler who shoots the man and takes off with the money. After getting permission to record this song, Los Tigres del Norte released "Contrabando y traición" ("Contraband and Betrayal") in 1974. The song quickly hit on both sides of the border, inspired a series of movies, and kicked off one of the most remarkable careers in Spanish-language music.

In norteño/conjunto form (a style featuring accordion that originated along the Texas border region), Los Tigres del Norte have been able to portray "real life" in a manner that strikes a chord with people across the Americas. Many of their most popular songs consist of tales or corridos about life, love, and the struggle to survive in an imperfect world. They regularly touch on the subject of narcotics and illegal immigration, but they have also shared stories of love and betrayal between a man and a woman. Together, the band and its public has turned norteño music into an international genre. The band has modernized the music, infusing it with bolero, cumbia, rock rhythms, waltzes, as well as effects of machine guns and sirens integrated with the music.