Turned 32 yesterday.
As mentioned before, I have not been feeling the best in any way or form. So when you're down bad like I was, sometimes a little gift for oneself makes the day feel not as heavy. Being born on Valentine’s Day makes me an expert in all things love (not), and yesterday, I kept thinking to myself, “You know what? I would love to finally buy a bajo quinto!”
The bajo quinto is a 10-string guitar used by norteño bands with a much deeper sound than a regular 6-string guitar. It is the sound in a song that makes couples sway hand-in-hand on the dance floor to some of my favorite bands like Duelo, Intocable, Pesado, Estruendo & Costumbre. Fun fact: I’m currently listening to “Soy Como No Soy” by Duelo in the interior design corner of HPB.
It was always one of my many dreams as a kid to be in a norteño band, & clearly I never became one, but adulthood is the time for more intentional dream chasing. So I set off to Guitar Center, ready to drop cash on a bajo quinto—fuck it!
When I got there, I went straight to the acoustic guitar room & scanned the whole wall for one. I’m there looking one-by-one, anticipating the “finally found you” moment. Finally, I hit the corner of a wall & see a very norteño-designed guitar.
“Aha!” I thought as I approached it to get a closer look. Empiezo a ver a un morrillo medio takuache approach it as well. I’m thinking, shoot, he may be getting this too.
Since the instrument was locked, we both stared at it & my eyes went to the price tag. $1300.
“¡A su madre! 😬😬” I screamed internally. I was hoping to spend around $700, so this was about 53% more than what I wanted to spend. Given I had just bought my plane ticket and stay for San Diego, the investment didn’t seem fitting for the day.
We both pretty much walked off at the same time.
I’m walking around for another 5 minutes trying to see if I missed one, and I suddenly hear bro plucking something undoubtedly beautiful to my ears. ¡Corridos! Corridos at Guitar Center! I love to hear it. I go back to one of the other rooms to get a better listen & I see him jamming with 2 of his friends. I couldn’t make out the song; it didn’t sound like corridos recios. It was something more sierreño. Think of Los Diamantes de Sinaloa. Regardless of the subgenre, they were killing it. I was fighting the urge to say, “Man, can I jam with you all?!?!” or at the very least, since they looked to be about early 20s, “Don’t ever give up on your musical dreams!” But my shyness overtook me & I walked out.
I ended up just roaming around GC for a bit, looking at the guitar pedals & electric guitars.
Suddenly I hear el mismo morrillo walk behind me along with a store employee. I hear the store employee tell him, “I can’t have people constantly coming in and just banging up the instruments, man. You know? We have to sell these instruments.”
“Yeah, no man, I completely understand,” dijo el morro.
Shit didn’t sit right with me. I remembered the same employee’s tone with another kid when I had walked in (I don’t even have to tell you the race), & unfortunately, it wasn’t as policing.
Couldn’t help but feel a sense of regret for not saying anything to los morrillos minutes. Con ganas de regresar al cuarto y decirles:
“Oigan, ¡manden a este puñetas a la chingada!”
To be a tío & say, “¡Tocan con madres!" To be like, “I’ve been jamming hard as fuck to Los Hijos de García lately!”
Unfortunately, I left it at that & I don't have an answer, like many of the other things. I need to step up. If it has to be in my own quiet way, so be it.
As I start off 32, I can't forget that little scrawny Mexican kid who heard Gerardo Ortiz for the first time. When people saw that music as naca & attached other negative connotations, I saw it as an opportunity to reshape people’s mental correlations. Perhaps the theme of this year is learning to defy everything that these social media platforms are telling us. All the norms, archetypes, advice, opinions... it's up to us to introduce new conglomerations.
Díganme algo, perros.
Erik
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