Corridos sin Fronteras: A New World Ballad Tradition @ Smithsonian Institution.

ZGS Communications, Inc., an Arlington, Va. firm specializing in multicultural marketing, joined the Smithsonian Institution in celebrating and promoting Hispanic heritage and culture in the traveling exhibition “Corridos sin Fronteras: A New World Ballad Tradition.” The exhibit highlights and showcases the importance of this tradition in Mexican culture because they are stories kept alive through folkloric ballads.

ZGS Communications created the visual concepts and produced three videos for this exhibition. One ten and two four-minute video productions give a historical account of the development of corridos, stories that tell of traditions and experiences of everyday life, from its origin to its role in the 21st century. Corridos are. The first video, El Mero Corrido (The Soul of the Corridos), is a history of the corrido in Mexican culture.

The other two videos are El Moro de Cumpas, a four-minute video about one of the finest horses in the town of Cumpas, a town on the U.S.and Mexico border. The legend claims that people confidently bet their homes and businesses that this horse would win a race against another popular horse along the border, but in the end, the horse lost the race. In the three-minute El Corrido de Bataan, the story tells the grief and hardship of young soldiers and war prisoners in Bataan, Philippines following the events of Pearl Harbor.

“Corridos sin Fronteras” will remain in the Arts and Industries Building at the Smithsonian until April, 2002 and will then travel to San José, California; Denver, Colorado; San Antonio, Texas; and Mc Allen, Texas.