Today, after many years of making it through new musical genres and trends, "rancheras" are not only about the appreciation of music, but also about the sociocultural issues present within the individual listening to this music. Whether it be the person who is driving down the street with the radio blaring and the car thumpin', the father who sits in his home with headphones on so as not to disturb his teenage daughters' assimilation tendencies, or the college professor who theorizes about the social and political significance of this music, these listeners are ascribing cultural and gendered meaning to this music. This essay offers an alternative literacy both to students and educators unfamiliar with this patriarchal and cultural music and to those who are immersed in it and who constantly negotiate conflicting cultural narratives. By analyzing "ranchera" music through a feminist lens and by incorporating the aural, visual, and written rhetoric that it encompasses, this essay offers alternative ways of engaging texts that work through colonialism and the rhetorical map that travels south to north. This analysis also offers those who live north of "up North" a way to theorize about the homeland and the borderlands that exist and that, as a consequence of anti-Mexican legislation, are becoming more delineated daily. (Contains 3 figures and 9 notes.)