Ranchera

by

Yolanda Broyles-González

• LAST MODIFIED: 17 April 2025
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199913701-0283

Introduction

The canción ranchera (ranchera song) is the single most popular pan-Mexican song genre in Mexico, in US Mexican American communities, and throughout Latin America. Ranchera songs are usually focused on land and/or love, expressed with a maximum of passionate imagery and a minimum of narrative detail. Song lyrics often speak to life experiences closely associated with the countryside, Indigenous life, poor and migratory people, and, more recently, they include some urban contexts. Singers express raw emotion through a combination of lyrics, suggestive physical gesturing, evocative vocal techniques, mid-song commentaries, and colorful regional traditional attire. The piercing grito (scream) from audience members or singers provides intermittent catharsis. Singers of ranchera with distinctive song styles gain iconic status. These collectively cherished songs move across generations and thus constitute a powerful oral tradition within Mexican-origin communities. While many of today’s popular rancheras can be traced back to the mid-1850s, this song genre’s roots go far deeper. Eurocentric research attempts to tie the ranchera to European operetta, although ranchera predates colonial imports such as opera. Canción ranchera, originally known as canción campirana (country song), demonstrates strong aesthetic ties to ancient Indigenous song traditions, such as the Náhua cuicatl (song). Both ranchera and cuicatl feature intense poetic language; variations in poetic structure and rhythmic structure, often including verse pair, oral transmission across generations, and multiple versions of songs across time. Ranchera imagery expresses the Mesoamerican cultural matrix through songs focused on specific regions and towns, native animal and plant life, birds, waterways, and mountains. The instrumental accompaniment also features regionally rooted musical ensembles and performance traditions such as banda, conjunto norteño, mariachi, or solo guitar. Rancheras are sung in Spanish and also in Indigenous regional languages. These songs are often danced; rhythmic patterns and time signatures include 2/4 time, ¾ time, a slower 4/4 time, or a mixture of these, along with occasional verse/chorus alternations. Verse metrics tend to be highly irregular. The iconography of lo ranchero (ranch style) includes not only ranchera songs (sound), but also clothing, Indigenous symbols, varied dance styles, iconic singers and ensembles, land-based knowledge, and contested identities. Ranchera songs helped jump-start the early-20th-century Mexican film industry, as films titled after beloved ranchera songs drew audiences. Ranchera/film fusion gave rise to a Mexican film genre called comedia ranchera, whose popularity extended from the 1930s to the 1950s. In the twenty-first century, the underpromoted regional Mexican music category sells more than all other Spanish-language styles combined.

Mexican Popular Music History

The references included here, such as Reuter 1981, Frenk 1975–1985, and Sturman 2016, provide broad introductions to the sociohistorical trajectories of various music and dance genres in Mexico, including ranchera. Works, such as Garrido 1974 and Madrid 2012, provide a context for understanding ranchera as one of various best-known Mexican (and Mexican American) music genres and dance through an examination of music genre’s sociohistorical contexts amid a host of cultural regions and across time. Works such as Mendoza 1956 and Vázquez Santana 1931 date the presence of many of today’s popular rancheras to the middle of the nineteenth century. Moreno Rivas 1979, for example, examines how existing deeply rooted popular song traditions, referred to as sonecitos del pueblo and/or canciones del país, vied with colonial imports since the eighteenth century. Mendoza 1956 and Saldívar 1934 also illustrate how many popular Mexican songs are rooted in longstanding Indigenous musical cultures. Campos 1928 focuses on the Indigenous roots of Mexican music in combination with Eurocentric colonial currents. Ranchera Indigenous Foundations examines some of the Indigenous music bedrock of today’s Mexican music. A fourth section features research centered on Ranchera: Migrations, Regional Identities. The fifth section focuses on what is perhaps the most intense ranchera research to date: the discussion of Ranchera: Gender, Sexuality, Feminism in ranchera performance and reception. A sixth section features Ranchera, Mass Media, Nation Formation. The seventh section Ranchera Song Anthologies and Collections features a sampling from the vast body of published ranchera song anthologies that were popular from the 1930s until the recent invention of digital media. This article concludes with Iconic Ranchera Performers and/or Composers, a subsection of materials focused on a handful of iconic ranchera performers.

• Campos, Rubén M. El folklore y la música Mexicana. Mexico City: Publicaciones de la Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1928.

  Broad discussion of Indigenous roots music as well as Eurocentric currents in Mexican music from 1525 to 1925. Defines the intrinsic qualities of Mexican folksong as brevity, intensity, highly concentrated emotionality, and sincerity: a formula for ranchera. Includes a rich collection of popular songs (coplas) with musical scores.

• Frenk, Margit, Cancionero folklórico de Mexico. 5 vols. Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 1975–1985.

  A monumental five-volume collection of Mexican love songs collected in the twentieth century through extensive field work (from the early 1950s until the 1980s) by a team of researchers and published between 1975 and 1985.

• Garrido, Juan. Historia de la musica popular en Mexico, 1896–1973. Mexico City: Editorial Extemporaneos, 1974.

  An in-depth treatment of Mexican musical styles, their histories, along with extensive information about composers, songs, musician unions, music institutions, media (radio), and annual listings of popular songs.

• Madrid, Alejandro L. Music in Mexico: Experiencing Music; Expressing Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. 2012.

  Discusses a handful of modern-day Mexican music genres (such as norteño, son jarocho, bolero, rock, balada) in terms of transnational ethnic identities, migration, and media influences. Features fieldwork, interviews with performers, and eyewitness accounts of performances. Includes a CD and companion website to guide students.

• Mendoza, Vicente T. Panorama de la música traditional de México. Mexico City: Imprenta Universitaria, 1956.

  One of the most comprehensive annotated anthologies of Mexican traditional songs from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which Mendoza divides into fourteen methods of classification. Mendoza discusses how Mexican provincial singers depart entirely from European models in forming the ranchera song.

• Moreno Rivas, Yolanda. Historia de la música popular mexicana. Mexico City: Alianza Editorial Mexicana, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1979.

  The author covers seven different music genres, including one chapter on ranchera authors and song titles. The book directly connects the bravío ranchera performance style of Lucha Reyes to the legacy of Mexican soldier women of the Mexican Revolution of 1910.

• Reuter, Jas. La música popular de Mexico: Origen e historia de la música que canta y toca el pueblo mexicano. Mexico City: Panorama Editorial, 1981.

  Examines Mexican music with regard to the many different regional traditions. Reuter also brings forward contemporary musical forms that carry the tensions of the Indigenous son traditions amid colonial influences. Includes many song examples and musician photos.

• Saldívar, Gabriel. Historia de la música en México. Mexico City: Editorial “Cvltvra,” 1934.

  A fascinating early history of music in Mexico with a rich bibliography. Saldívar divides Mexican music history into three main areas: Indigenous music, European imports, and popular music genres. His discussion of Mexican song (canción) recognizes that all song forms imported from Europe underwent considerable change when Indigenous peoples appropriated European elements into existing Indigenous musical systems.

• Sturman, Janet L. The Course of Mexican Music. New York: Routledge, 2016.

  A panoramic treatment of Mexican music across history, from Antiquity to contemporary expressions. Includes ninety audio tracks, video links, and illustrations, plus additional guidance for students.

• Vázquez Santana, Higinio. Historia de la canción Mexicana: Canciones, cantares y corridos. 3 vols. Mexico City: Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1931.

  A three-volume treasure trove of Mexican songs, with a commentary on each song. Many contemporary popular songs date to the early nineteenth century. While most scholars attribute the ranchera’s origins to European imports, Vázquez Santana figures among the very few scholars who credit rural communities with the creation of songs. Many of the songs he has gathered are significant for future ranchera scholarship.