16th October, 2010
Pretty much every one of the most popular banda sinaloense groups has a Lizárraga in its history, because they all hail from Mazatlán, but the Salvador Lizárraga who took the reins of Banda El Limón in the 70s does not appear to have been a close relative of the Cruz Lizárraga who founded El Recodo some forty years earlier. When Salvador suffered a stroke in the 90s, clarinetist René Camacho took the reins, and had enough success that once his former boss recovered enough to reclaim his position, Camacho no longer wanted to take his orders. And so the group split: Camacho's band, La Arrolladora (the overwhelming), has continued to have pop success, while Lizárraga's Original Banda El Limón has retained its audience, occasionally coming close to La Arrolladora's heights but staying a little more traditional.
Not that "Niña de Mi Corazón" is paricularly iconoclastic: lyrically, it's an extremely old-fashioned love song in which Jorge Medina's male lover sees his female beloved as an innocent young girl in need of protection. It could read as extremely paternalistic, not to say creepy, something the video ameliorates by having the love story be an old man's memory of childhood love in an orphanage; and the girl is adopted, leaving the boy behind. But the lightness and complexity of the rhythm, a modified bolero, keeps the big-band arrangement from feeling too stodgy. Camacho's wind-forward arrangements are among the most gorgeous in banda, and Medina's tender singing is unrivaled in the banda I've covered to date.
But this is the last banda #1 we will encounter before Billboard's metholodology for calculating the Hot Latin chart changes to incorporate streaming. I haven't decided yet whether, when I reach that milestone, I'll switch over to the Airplay chart, which uses the same methodology that has served this chart since 1986, or stick to the Hot Latin chart for continuity's sake. If you have a strong opinion one way or the other, consider leaving a comment or atting me on Twitter about it.
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