Book Review

Banda: Mexican Musical Life Across Borders. By Helena Simonett. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8195-6429-X (cloth); ISBN 0-8195-6430-3 (pbk.). Pp. xii, 372. $65.00 (cloth); $19.95 (pbk.).

Given the recent bonanza of monographs on Latin American music, especially in the realm of popular music, it strikes me as odd that relatively few studies have been conducted on Mexican popular music. While it is true that there have been several studies on border music and studies of regional music in areas of the United States with a significant Mexican population, there have not been many studies in the area of Mexican popular music. It is, therefore, with welcome enthusiasm that Helena Simonett's new book Banda: Mexican Musical Life Across Borders should be received by ethnomusicologists and students of Latin American culture. The study is more than just an account of banda in Mexico, as it chronicles the recent Sinaloan influenced technobanda craze that found fertile terrain in Los Angeles, which in turn had a reciprocal influence on traditional banda music in Mexico. In this way, Simonett's book reveals the transnational dimension of banda music.