The Sound of Silence:
The corrido as Counterculture
in Felipe Cazals’ Canoa
As a national film industry emerged at the turn of the twentieth century in Mexico, filmmakers were quick to capitalise on the huge popularity of
The Sound of Silence:
The corrido as Counterculture
in Felipe Cazals’ Canoa
As a national film industry emerged at the turn of the twentieth century in Mexico, filmmakers were quick to capitalise on the huge popularity of traditional music.1 Decades later, the soundtrack to the tumultuous events in Mexico in the late 1960s and 1970s continued to reference traditional music, but it also increasingly looked to global youth culture. Songs by U.S. or local rock musicians became a notable feature of films produced in Mexico at this time, with rock music often functioning as a shorthand that differentiated a hip, younger generation from their conservative elders. This article is concerned with Felipe Cazals’ Canoa (1975), which centres on the clash between the youth of the 1960s and an older, repressive, generation, yet it uses traditional Mexican music, particularly the ballad known as the corrido, rather than a more contemporary rock or pop soundtrack. Cazals’ formal experiments in this film have attracted much critical commentary, as will be discussed later, but his use of music to critique a repressive government and call into question an idyllic representation of the nation has received little attention. This article will consider Cazals’ unconventional use of music in this and other films to provide a radical alternative to the formulaic use of music in earlier Mexican films and to suggest how music can be much more than an accompaniment to images and dialogue.
The Corrido, Rock Music and Mexican National Identity
The diverse ways in which music’s contribution to cinema can be understood is reflected in numerous studies, which, although they approach the subject in different ways, unite in asserting the central importance of music to film. Ian Inglis makes the bold claim that ‘all film relies, in varying degrees, on musical elements’,2 while Kevin Donnelly argues that: ‘Film music is invariably more than it seems to be. It is often far from simply aural wallpaper: it is vibrant and affecting, a central pillar of cinema’s power and charm.’3 Music undoubtedly structures and influences our reading of films, and it has greatly enhanced the appeal of Mexican cinema since its inception. The films from the so-called Golden Age of the 1940s to 1950s, such as Fernando de Fuentes’ hugely successful comedia ranchera Allá en el Rancho Grande (1936) or Alberto Gout’s Aventurera (1950), take their titles from songs and loosely base their plots on them, while their action is punctuated regularly by musical numbers ranging from rancheras to rumbas. Film music during the so-called Golden Age of the 1940s and 1950s was generally diegetic, presented as a natural part of the narrative. Songs could be used to evoke a variety of emotional responses in the audience. The enduringly popular Nosotros los pobres, directed in 1948 by Ismael Rodríguez, opens with its protagonist Pepe el Toro, played by Pedro Infante, singing ‘Ni hablar mujer’, joined by virtually the entire cast, whose joyful singing and dancing suggest a united and, quite literally, harmonious community. Pepe’s next number, ‘Amorcito corazón’, is a serenade, while the next number, ‘Las mañanitas’, which is also performed with support from several neighbours, is a birthday song to his niece that again underlines the importance of family and extended family, a central theme of the film. This use of music to reflect the onscreen drama and to add intensity to certain dramatic moments is a standard part of film practice, yet there has also been much discussion of the way in which film music is essentially not heard. As Peter Larsen notes in a far-ranging discussion of theories of viewer response to film music, ‘normally film music is “unheard” in the same way as camera angles, colours, lighting, are normally “unseen”’.4 It is the dramatic departure from this conventional wisdom that makes Cazals’ use of music in Canoa particularly notable, as its presence is both insistently visible and also, equally dramatically, unheard.
As the 1960s came to an end, the idea of what constituted Mexican national identity was the subject of much debate and the issue of uniting an extremely diverse country again came to the fore. Young people began to turn away from a traditional, nationalistic identity and instead immersed themselves in a new, more open identity that embraced other cultures and influences. The anti-authoritarian, countercultural movement in Mexico during the 1960s and 1970s is often associated with rock music, as young people sought to align