Urban Cowboys

(audience cheering)

(norteno music)

[Alec] My name is Alec Wilkinson and I've written

a piece in this week's issue about the norteno-band

Los Tigres del Norte.

They were here in Brooklyn.

They come about every two years.

They played for about 8000 people.

The comparison that turns up most often,

try to imagine something somewhere between

Bruce Springsteen and The Rolling Stones and you have

an idea of the kinds of crowds these people draw.

Wherever you see Los Tigres you see a lot of cowboy hats

and you see a lot in Brooklyn, and they're real cowboy hats,

they're not Ralph Lauren.

Norteno is music from the border regions,

the first way that Los Tigres would tour

is to follow the path of the migrant workers.

What makes them distinct is they're regarded

as a kind of message bringer.

We try to make our people happy,

you know we're going through a lot of struggles,

especially here in the US with all these new immigration

laws that have passed.

So we're trying to bring our people a little bit of

happiness to their hearts, to their minds, and also to leave

their problems at home and to come enjoy our shows.

There's not a rock and roll musician I've ever written

about who wants to meet his or her fans, that's,

there's plenty of security, Los Tigres, after they finish

playing they simply go stand beside the stage

and shake the hands and take a photograph

with anybody in the audience who wants to meet them.

So it's an utterly different engagement with your audience.

They've been around now for 40 years, so you have

grandparents who first heard Los Tigres, who brought

their children, who now are bringing their children.

So you have generations of families, it's very distinctive.

It's a very family oriented affair.

My parents are obsessed with it, they traumatized me

with it but I love them, I'm a fanatic.

I go crazy about them.

I think they're the only band in show business

and certainly the only arena act I can think of

that takes the stage without a set list.

Other people in the audience write down requests

and when the concert is over, when the stage is clean,

they play everything that the people want to hear.

(audience cheering)