ISBN Nor-tec Rifa! ( Electronic Dance Music from Tijuana to the World ) book English Hardcover 272 pages

At the dawn of the twenty-first century the Nor-tec phenomenon emerged from the border city of Tijuana and through modern Internet technology quickly conquered a global audience. Marketed as a kind of ethnic electronic dance music Nor-tec samples sounds of traditional music from the north of Mexico transforming these sounds through computer technology used in European and American techno music and electronica. Mostly middle-class artists in their thirties and with few exceptions all from Tijuana Nor-tec musicians tend to avoid the mainstream music industry's channels distributing works instead through the underground global means of the Internet enabling a loyal international following to grow rapidly. Perched on the border between Mexico and the United States Tijuana has media links to both countries with peoples currencies and cultural goods -perhaps especially music- from both sides circulating intensely within the city. Tijuana's older residents and their more mobile cosmopolitan-minded children thus engage in a constant struggle with identity and nationality appropriation and authenticity. Nor-tec music in its very composition encapsulates this city's struggle. It resonates with issues felt on the global level while holding vastly different meanings to the variety of communities that embrace it. In Nor-tec Rifa! Alejandro L. Madrid crafts a fascinating account of this music and the city that fostered its birth. With an impressive hybrid of musicology ethnomusicology cultural and performance studies urbanism and border studies Nor-tec Rifa! offers compelling insights into the cultural production of Nor-tec as it stems from orteña banda and grupera traditions. The book is also amongst the first to offer detailed accounts of Nor-tec music's composition process.