Some of the older corridos here speak of the beauty of the valley - one, a romantic ballad called Nampa, extols the virtues of its women and "silvery moon nights" - or bar fights long forgotten. But the longing for home, and the difficulty of going back, are more popular themes among the current crop of local musicians.
"If I write one about my friend over there the people would say, hey, who wants to hear about him?" said Gerardo Barca, a musician known by his nickname, Lalo. "People want to be transported home, to time and events there."
So Barca wrote the bittersweet Lindos Recuerdos, or "Beautiful Memories," about the loss of his family's ranch in Michoacan to development after he left 15 years ago and his inability to ever return.
These are just beautiful memories of times that won't come back;
Since the times have changed,
and where there was that little ranch now there is a city.
"Everybody here can relate to that, to that idea of wanting to go home but never really making it," he said.
Hispanic immigrants, primarily from Mexico and Texas, came to the Treasure Valley here in three waves. The first arrived in the 1800s to work in mines and build railroads, another came to work in agriculture in the postwar boom of the 1940s and 1950s and a third in the past couple of decades as Boise and its suburbs have swollen over farmland.
Carrying on the tradition
From 1990 to 2000, the Hispanic population of Idaho grew 92 percent, to 101,690, with most of that growth in the Treasure Valley.
Alfredo Paz, a local musician, laments that the younger generation prefers narco-corridos, a rough equivalent to gangsta rap and something he and his band members refuse to perform.
"We don't want to sing about drugs or rape or anything like that," said Paz, who does perform corridos about double-crossed lovers and his signature, Le Quedan Plumas Al Gallo, or The Rooster Still Has His Feathers. The song is about a man defeated in love but still the cock of the walk.
Garcia, who has been in the US for more than 20 years, said he was carrying on a musical tradition handed down from his father and practiced in the small village where he grew up.
"I always wanted to be somebody so I composed music," he said.
While watching the immigration marches that day, Garcia said he felt compelled to put "our story" to music, scratching out the words over several weeks, right up to the day the folklife center researchers came calling.
"I feel we need to write out stories and this was a big part of our story here," he said. "Corridos used to be like newspapers. Well, maybe, they still should be."
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