The Mexican ballad is a song of the epic-narrative gender that derives of the Castilian romance and of the jácara. Of the romance it conserves their narrative character, and of the jácara, the exaggerated emphasis of the machismo, the boasting and importance characteristic of checks and bullies. It embraces sentimental stories of the loving type equally and those of those events that stand out in the local, regional or national life. This last, it had particular importance in Mexico until before the establishment of the modern massive means of communication, when the Mexican ballads circulated, among the town, forms in loose leaves that were sold for who interpreted them in public squares and markets, carrying out, partly, the paper of difusores of news.
The Mexican ballad began to be sung, as popular expression, at the end of the XIX century, making the sung story of the feats of those who rebelled against the government porfirista. It reached their maximum development during the time understood among the beginning of the revolution maderista (1910) and the liquidation of the movement cristero (1929).
Starting from then, the Mexican ballad spreads to become skillful, without spontaneity; because with an approach many mediocre times, or with lucrative desire, Mexican ballads are composed almost with the only object of pointing out the ephemeral victory of some sportsman, or, what is worse, to eulogize certain candidate limitlessly -from the municipal level until the national one - in its political campaign. However, this decadence doesn't mean that they have disappeared the true corridistas completely who with its creative fantasy, and before the events that more they move to the society, they continue cultivating this important gender of the music vernacular Mexican.
The Mexican ballad has arrived to a classic structure that understands the following aspects, although not necessarily in the same order:
a) Application off to begin the song.
b) Location in place and date.
c) Presentation of the, or the characters. Or in their case, the reason of the Mexican ballad.
d) Development.
e) It Unravels.
f) Moral.
g) Farewell.
There are cases like that of the Mexican ballad of "Rosita Alvírez" in that the outcome thinks about together with the date in the first verse:
Year of 1900
it presents it I have me
in a neighborhood of Saltillo
Rosita Alvírez died.
Where the intelligent way can be appreciated in the one that the author wakes up the interest to know that Rose died.
He/she gets used that the melodic topic is same for all the verses, with brief interludes, during those that rest the singers.
According to the matter that approaches, the Mexican ballad can also be denominated: history, narration, story, example, tragedy, tomorrow or mornings, memories, verses or ballads.
