Nortec Collective | Music | MP3 Search

Nortec’s roots go deep, to the early 1970s with the birth of electronica and the beginnings of the Latin pop renaissance. While krautrock experiemented with raw synthesized sounds and beats, the development and audience of norteño and tambora/ banda music spread far and wide.

These separately developing influences would flirt over the next two decades, from the occasional latin-flavored, electronic-assisted disco track to the more experimental synth pop of the 1980s. However, it was not until the the 1990s that the explosion of electronic music truly began to offer a way to merge the traditional sounds with the power of modern music.

When house, trance, techno and electro (et al) began to dominate the world and artists truly began to use computers to compose, the cumulative effect was to revolutionize the way that music was created. The unintentional result was an increase in authentic expression — electronica had the power to accept and transform while preserving even the most idiosyncratic and traditional forms of music.

Fussible (Pepe Mogt) began using banda sinaloense and norteño samples in electronic compositions near the end of the decade, and amassed a collection of tambora and norteño samples to use and distribute to other artists, chiefly Bostich (Ramon Amezcua), Clorofila (Jorge Verdín) and Hiperboreal (Pedro Gabriel Beas), the current members of the collective.

The “Nor-Tec Sampler” was the first fruit of these collaborations, a collection of diverse but stylistically-related sounds and beats that presented a perfect representation of the modern sound of Tijuana.

“The Tijuana Sessions” grew out of this genesis. “Volume 3″ of that series was nominated for two Latin Grammy awards, and “Tijuana Sound Machine” for a Best Latin Rock/ Alternative Grammy.

Since that fateful serendipity in 1999, the Nortec has toured the world, bringing true Tijuana to Hannover for the Expo 2000, to the Elysée Montmartre, to Japan, New York, London…

The visual side of the performance is taken care of by the “Colectivo Visual” a group of designers and VJs. The film “Tijuana Makes Me Happy” reverses the equation, with a Nortec soundtrack under the thoroughly authentic visual narrative — the song itself even made it into the 2006 FIFA World Cup video game soundtrack.