UCLA

This dissertation examines the connections between music and sentimentalism in Mexico, particularly as expressed in the popular songs known as boleros, and it considers how the genre developed in conjunction with Mexico’s recording industry from the 1930s onward. The bolero became a crucial element in the formation of an imagined community, particularly for those in urban areas, and the preferred musical packaging in which sentimentalism was commercialized, circulated, and consumed. I examine the bolero, and the sentimentalism associated with it, as a “field of cultural production.” In its simplest terms, this dissertation is about the connections between music and sentimentalism in the middle of the twentieth century, and how these connect with socio-political and economic events. I explore how musical sentimentalism is the deep expression of societal disappointments and at the same time a means for social mobility through the competition for symbolic capital.

Analysis is centered on the following groups, chosen for their popularity and their unique positions in the field of bolero: Los Panchos, Los Tres Diamantes, Los Ases, Los Caballeros, Los Tecolines, Los Dandys, Los Santos, and Los Tres Reyes. In providing a contemporary reading of the bolero, I also assess a recent bolero revival as a possible indicator of Mexicans’ optimistic attachment to a political project yet to be realized.