Norteño

Norteño is the regional music of northern Mexico and the Mexican-American borderlands, built on the diatonic button accordion and the bajo sexto, a twelve-string bass guitar. German, Czech and Polish polkas, waltzes and redowas carried into Texas and Nuevo León in the nineteenth century were absorbed into a Mexican repertory of corridos — narrative ballads of heroes, migration and contraband — rancheras and cumbias. The modern conjunto format was fixed by accordionists such as *Narciso Martínez* and popularised worldwide by *Los Tigres del Norte*, whose corridos made the style the soundtrack of the Mexican diaspora.