Lydia Mendoza - Mal Hombre-1934

Lydia Mendoza was born May 1916 in Houston, Texas to a musically talented family. Lydia's mother played guitar and sang Mexican songs. Wishing to be like her mother, Lydia made her first guitar out of a wooden plank, nails, and rubber bands.The family travelled between Houston, south Texas and Monterrey, Mexico while Lydia was growing up. Several members of the family worked in the Carta Blanca Brewery while in Monterrey, a name which the family would later adopt as their own for their musical family. Sister Maria played mandolin; Panchita, guitar; Manuel, triangle; Lydia, violin and the youngest-Juanita, danced. In 1928,when Lydia was 12, the family auditioned in San Antonio and were paid $140. for 20 songs. Lydia made a solo of Mal Hombre, having learned the words from a bubble gum wrapper.
Lydia expanded her tours into Mexico and then into South America as she became popular there. In a fitting testimony to her work, Mexico, not the US, chose the Texan to represent them in the Smithsonian Festival of Folk Life. She sang passionately of romantic longings and the life of the migrant working families. Her "Tejano" work has influenced singers from Mexico to the Texas born Selena. Lydia recorded this version of Mal Hombre just before her 18th birthday as seen at 1:36 in this vid..

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Lydia
• Mendoza
• Mal
• Hombre
• Tejano
• conjunto
• Mexican
• guitar
• 1930s
• 78s
• Houston
• San
• Antonio

[donleeharper]

> My question is why did the film producer decide to place images of Mexicana revolutionaries in the video.

Answer: It's like any cowboy in the west who was good with a gun. He inevitably got the reputation of a "bad guy", because even if he was a "good guy", people labeled him as having killed people, so he was one not to mess with.

To most (of us) gringos, any Mexican with a moustache, a gun and a bandolier of bullets is a "bad guy".

[preservationhall01]

@donleeharper Mexicans shown in this vid with "a moustache, a gun, and a bandolier of bullets" WERE bad guys.  While they may be rightly portrayed in Mexican history books as having "liberated Mexico", they still murdered innocent men~women~kids in Columbus, New Mexico; Glenn Springs, Texas and anyone in Mexico who did not agree with them. Much of the blood of Pancho Villa has been whitewashed by history but he was still a murderer of innocents who were not combatants in Mexico's revolution.

[alvarado143]

My name is Roger Hernandez, grandson of Lydia Mendoza. Her daughter Yolanda Hernandez is my mother. I ran across this very beautiful montage of my grandmother's most famous song. One thing is I know for a fact is that the images of Mexicana revolutionaires are not who she meant were the ' Mal Hombre's" in this song. The ' Mal Hombre's " were the men who mistreated women back when women had no voice. She was the voice for all these women. My grandmother was a women way before her time.

[citationxbjfv]

@alvarado143 i am from matamoros mexico,,my mother when she was young used to listen lydia's songs,,i knew of her because of my mother,,and you are right the images of the mexican revolutionaires has nothint to do whit your grand mother song,,mal hombre,,the pictures of the revolutionaires are,,EMILIANO ZAPATA,PANCHO VILLA AND HIS "DORADOS"

[preservationhall01]

@citationxbjfv I am very aware that he song was not written specifically about the Mexican revolutonaries. The words, however were fitting for the type of men that people like Villa were. That was the intent of this vid. Perhaps glorified in Mexican history books, Villa and his men were nevertheless Mal Hombres, killers of innocent men, women and children. Had he lived in this century, truth is Villa would have been tried as a war criminal and most likely executed himself.

[preservationhall01]

@alvarado143 I am aware that the song was about gutless men who were mistreating women. It was difficult, no, impossible to make a video about Hispanic men beating their wives and girlfriends. I took the film maker's liberty of making the vid about another group of Mal Hombres who were even worse-cold blooded killers. You can certainly disagree about who Mexican heroes were but I would tell you people like Villa have had their sordid past whitewashed in Mexican history books.

[nadia59]

beautiful voice.

[edenalejandro]

Amo esta cancion, una gran letra que a mi mami le encanta, y antes ella la cantaba a toda nuestra familia, y me trae grandes y bellos recuerdos...muchas gracias por haberla subido

[mongomode]

eres 1 mal hombre . que bonita cansion y cantandola lidia

[preservationhall01]

@busessuck1 Well she was a Texan so this music has always been jointly owned by a least a portion of the population of the USA.~never lived in Mexico that I know of though her family worked in Monterrey for a time.. This music was a product of the Tejano culture of South Texas and is still strong in Houston, San Antonio, El Paso and Corpus Christi.

[busessuck1]

Wow, she sound so authentic... the USA was really the first to bring out and document these fantastic musical cultures

[johnjack19691988]

Lydia Mendoza fue la primer artista tejana que se presentara en Mexico en su epoca. Roger I heard a statement that early in her career she had to say she was from Nuevo Laredo for some reason so she would be able to play in Mexico. Do you know if this true and if it is elaborate on it a little more. Gracias y los felicito por su talento y en paz descanse la alhondra de la frontera.