Los Tigres del Norte Play at Chumash Casino
Band Performs Socially Conscious Songs Portraying Lives of Working Class
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One of my most salient memories of growing up involves being outdoors with my family as my father grilled carne asada with potatoes while Los Tigres del Norte’s song “Jefe de Jefes” (“Boss of Bosses”) blared through portable speakers. Through music and my family, I have come to realize that there are few things more Californian than the experience of being a working-class immigrant from Latin America. In fact, the immigration experience is written into the very name of the band Los Tigres del Norte.
On a temporary visa, bandleader Jorge Hernández and his brothers were on their way to San Jose, California, when they first entered the United States in 1968. To help support their families, they had been vagabonding between their hometown of Rosa Morada in Sinaloa, Mexico, to the port city Los Mochis, and as far away as Mexicali to play norteño music for small change inside clubs and restaurants. In a stroke of luck, Jorge, the eldest of the brothers, who was 22 years old at the time, was contracted to play with the then-unnamed band for the Hispanic inmates of Soledad, a prison about 60 miles south of San Jose. At the border crossing, an immigration agent, impressed with the group’s youth and ambition, called the group of musicians “little tigers.” The moniker stuck, and Los Tigres del Norte, or Tigers of the North, has since become one of the most influential bands in Latin America as well as the Spanish-speaking community of the U.S.
