Sergio Gomez roared into Morelia, Mexico, in a big SUV, entourage in tow, pressed suits, fancy cowboy boots. Everything about him said “superstar''.
He had an international following and an impish smile that drove the women wild.
More than 20,000 fans swarmed the parking area of this colonial city's football stadium to dance and hear him sing romantic Duranguense Grupero pop songs backed by a driving drumbeat.
After the show, Gomez was kidnapped in the small hours. Police found his body the next day. He had been strangled and beaten.
His face — a face that had graced album covers and made teenage girls blush — was disfigured by burn marks.
Gomez, 34, was the latest of a dozen pop musicians who have been killed in Mexico.
Nearly every one of the slayings bore the hallmarks of the drug cartel hitmen blamed for 4,000 deaths in the country in the past two years.
Branded and scared
But the savage murder of Gomez — one of Mexico's hottest singers, a headliner whose band K-Paz de la Sierra commanded twice the rate of other top bands — was different.
It has set off an unprecedented chain reaction in which at least half a dozen bands have cancelled concert tours.
Popular bands such as Patrulla 81, which backed out of four major shows, are terrified of coming to Morelia and the surrounding state of Michoacan.
“All this is very dark for us,'' says Jose Angel Medina, Patrulla 81's lead singer. “We're very worried. Very scared.''
Among music industry insiders, Gomez's death and the previous killings are also forcing an assessment of the influence drug trafficking kingpins wield over the business.
It is common knowledge in Mexico's music industry that drug cartels finance the careers of some budding musicians, then launder money through unregulated concert ticket sales.
There has been no suggestion that Gomez was backed by drug money.
But the obvious cartel-hitmen trademarks in his killing have forced the music industry to question the risks of mixing socially and professionally with drug traffickers.
“The narcos are completely involved in the business,'' says Lucio Tzin Tzun, who has been a concert promoter there for 20 years. “They control everything. It's like a mafia.''
The marriage of music and the underworld is nothing new.
In the United States, Frank Sinatra was long criticised for being too cosy with the mafia and, more recently, Gangsta Rappers often have been accused of celebrating violence against police.
In Mexico, the musical celebration of counterculture figures is in the country's DNA. Songs continue to celebrate Pancho Villa, a bandit-turned-revolutionary folk hero.
The new bandit heroes are drug traffickers, celebrated in songs known as Narcocorridos and written by artistes who are “essentially court poets for the drug world'', says Elijah Wald, author of the book Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns and Guerrillas.
The existence of the Narcocorrido genre made the drug cartel-style killing of Gomez all the more puzzling.
Gomez made his reputation with romantic ballads and kitschy covers such as the New Orleans-inflected classic Jambalaya. He didn't sing about drug dealers.
Gomez was no Valentin Elizalde, the Mexican singer murdered in November 2006 after his Narcocorrido To All My Enemies, a song that mocked drug kingpin Osiel Cardenas, became an internet sensation.
A clear line seemed to connect Elizalde's lyrics to his demise. No such line ties Gomez's music to his death.
But Wald said the popular notion that only Narcocorrido singers mix with drug lords couldn't be farther from the truth. Musicians are sometimes expected to give private concerts for kingpins.
Deadly nexus
The nexus between drug traffickers and musicians often forms in poor mountain villages. Young musicians have few sources of income to launch their careers.
There is scant public funding for popular music genres, which ruling elites look down upon as lower-class junk, Wald says.
Drug traffickers are often the only wealthy people in the mountain villages of states such as Sinaloa, a hotbed of cartel activity.
Sometimes, the musician can become almost a serf to his kingpin sponsor.
“There are those who dedicate themselves to singing for those people,'' says Alfredo Ramirez Corral, lead singer of Los Creadorez del Pasito Duranguense. “Each person has to do what they can to make a living.''
Traffickers are drawn to musical acts because they provide an easy platform to launder money.
There are other easy options but none is so culturally prestigious.
The glamour of the music scene makes it irresistible to narco-traffickers, says Rolando Coro, a disc jockey in Morelia.
