ARTSEDGE: The Music & Meaning of Mexican Corridos

This Unit at a Glance:

Grade Band:

Integrated Subjects:
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Targeted Standards:

The National Standards For Arts Education:

Music (9-12)
Standard 6: Listening to, analyzing, and describing music

Music (9-12)
Standard 8: Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts

Music (9-12)
Standard 9: Understanding music in relation to history and culture

Other National Standards:

Language Arts IV (9-12) Standard 1: Uses the general skills and strategies of the writing process

Language Arts IV (9-12) Standard 2: Uses the stylistic and rhetorical aspects of writing

Language Arts IV (9-12) Standard 5: Uses the general skills and strategies of the reading process

Language Arts IV (9-12) Standard 6: Uses reading skills and strategies to understand and interpret a variety of literary texts

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The Music & Meaning of Mexican Corridos

Unit Overview:

The corrido is a ballad form that developed in Mexico during the 1800s and still thrives today. In this unit, students will examine the historical and cultural significance of corridos and will compose original corrido lyrics. Since traditional historical corridos were written to communicate the news about actual events, especially the exploits of famous heroes or individuals fighting unjust authorities, one lesson in this unit focuses on corridos written about the Mexican Revolution. In the other lesson, students examine corrido lyrics from a language arts perspective, analyzing literary devices and themes at work in a selection of corrido lyrics.

Lesson Overviews:

Corridos About the Mexican Revolution

Students will be introduced to causes of the Mexican Revolution and key revolutionary figures through the study of a particular Mexican song form, the corrido.

Form and Theme in the Traditional Mexican Corrido

Students will analyze the themes and literary devices used in the traditional Mexican musical form of corridos.