Cinesonidos: Film Music and National Identity During Mexico’s Época de Oro is the first book-length study concerning the function of music in the prominent genres structured by the Mexican film industry. Integrating primary source material with film music studies, sound studies, and Mexican film and cultural history, this project closely examines examples from five significant film genres that developed during the 1930s through 1950s. These genres include the prostitute melodrama, the fictional indigenista film (films on indigenous themes or topics), the cine de añoranza porfiriana (films of Porfirian nostalgia), the revolutionary melodrama, and the comedia ranchera (ranch comedy). The musics in these films helped create and accentuate the tropes and archetypes considered central to Mexican cultural nationalism. Distinct in narrative and structure, each genre exploits specific, at times contradictory, aspects of Mexicanidad—the cultural identity of the Mexican people—and, as such, employs different musics to concretize those constructions. Throughout this turbulent period, these tropes and archetypes mirrored changing perceptions of Mexicanidad manufactured by the state and popular and transnational culture. Several social and political agencies were heavily invested in creating a unified national identity to merge the previously fragmented populace owing to the Mexican Revolution (1910–ca.1920). The commercial medium of film became an important tool in acquainting a diverse urban audience with the nuances of national identity, and music played an essential and persuasive role in the process. In this heterogeneous environment, cinema and its music continuously reshaped the contested, fluctuating space of Mexican identity.
