Navigating Ideologies in "In-Between" Cultures: Signifying Practices in Nor-tec Music

When a friend invited me on 25 March 2000 to attend a concert of techno music at Mexico City's Zócalo, I was a little puzzled and did not know what to expect. A rave organized by the government of Mexico City and presented in the heart of the city's political life seemed bizarre. As it turned out, and in accordance with the history of the location, I was about to witness a true political act; not political in terms of overt "policy," but rather, in a broader Foucouldian sense, as an act that ratified the difficult power relations between Mexico City and the northern border of Mexico, an act that exposed and performed the complex interaction between center and periphery. The concert was the last event of the Tecnogeist 2000 Festival, and presented deejays from Germany—Dr. Motte, DJ Hell, Acid Maria, and Yannick—and Mexico—Linga, DJUnknown, and Borderline from Alcachofa Sound, and Fussible and Bostich from the Nor-tec collective—before an audience of 50,000 youngsters ready to dance, jump, and roll all night long.

I was especially interested in the Nor-tec collective since my friends told me they considered them some of the most original musicians ever to come out of Tijuana. After two German Deejays opened the concert and prepared the crowd with the powerful, hypnotic driving rhythms of typical techno music, the circumstances seemed perfect for the presentation of Bostich. By the time the Tijuana musician finally appeared on stage, I was excited and consumed by anticipation. The looser rhythmic patterns, slower melodic flow, and the sounds of güiro and tuba of Bostich's Syntakon quickly set a new pace and tempo for the party, and suddenly, the crowd, with the exception of a few individuals who seemed already familiar with the style, slowly stopped dancing and began booing the musician. I was distressed by what I felt was an unfair reception for rather interesting music, and in the days following the event could not stop thinking about the significance of that reaction.

When a year later I asked Pepe Mogt, one of the founders of the Nor-tec collective, to explain in a few sentences what Nor-tec was, he replied: "[Nor-tec] is being able to express, anywhere outside of Tijuana, everything you perceive when you go through the streets of Tijuana—sounds, music, colors, signs, forms—; in my case I do this through music" (Pepe Mogt, personal communication, 4 November 2001). Mogt's description emphasizes Nor-tec as a strategic tool of self-representation, as a way to re-write the identities of tijuanenses and present them to the world.

Today, when I observe the current success of Nor-tec music in Mexico City, it seems clear to me that the reaction of Mexico City youngsters during the 2000 concert was informed by their unfulfilled expectations regarding both techno music and norteño identity; Nor-tec musicians did not satisfy their preconceptions of either techno or norteño. ² This reaction suggests that important issues of representation and self-representation, of hegemony and agency, of center and periphery, lay at the core of both the production and the consumption of Nor-tec culture. In this article, I explore these questions under the specific conditions of globalization that allowed Nor-tec musicians to enter the mainstream music market. My work shows that, as a strategy in a struggle for hegemony, Nor-tec culture works as an institution that both challenges and reproduces dominant discourses of ethnicity and race, as well as national and local identity. The Mexican underground writer Guillermo Fadanelli discusses Tijuana in the following terms:

Tijuana is like a mirage, it is there only for those who can or want to see it. For most, however, [Tijuana] is transparent, it does not exist: our gaze, from this side of the border...