By LUCIANA LOPEZ

The competitors in Saturday's contest all came to sing their songs for different reasons. One woman traveled up from California that same day so she could sing for her mother. Another woman wanted to send a CD of her performance to her grandfather, who lives in Mexico. One man aspires to a songwriting career.

But ultimately, the reasons went beyond the specific motivations of the 17 individuals and groups who got up on the stage at the Cipriano Ferrel Education Center in Woodburn. They, and their audience of better than 200 people, were there to sing about their shared communal truths in a musical form that's endured and evolved over more than a century: the corrido, the ballad form of Mexico.

The contest was sponsored by the Western Folklife Center, a Nevada-based organization that celebrates life in the American West. The contest awarded four first prizes of $200 each, as well as a grand prize of $300. Entrants could sing an original composition of their own or by someone else, and they were judged on their message, their interpretation of the corrido form, their song structure and their inventiveness. A similar contest earlier this year in Nampa, Idaho, drew more than a dozen contestants.

Months before the Oregon contest, the folklife center sent out Juan Dies, a musician and ethnomusicologist, to encourage potential contest entrants and to study the state of the corrido in Oregon.

"I found a lot more (corridos) than I was expecting," Dies said on Friday (Dies was in Chicago on Saturday, playing with his own band, Sones de Mexico Ensemble, and missed the contest here). And, he added, those corridos aren't necessarily being written by professional musicians so much as by everyday people, who write them as a hobby to share their personal experiences with friends.

That might not be a surprise to those familiar with the form, which has roots that reach back through the centuries to narrative verse. In the pre-BlackBerry days of the early 20th century, the corrido was as much about spreading information as it was about music. The songs told tales of glory or tragedy, about daring deeds and recent deaths.

Even now, corridos serve some of that function. One contestant, Fabian Pastrana, noted the importance of corridos because they talk about things that are real. Of course, these days, the realities of life aren't so much about the Mexican Revolution of the early 1900s, a fact reflected among Saturday's entries. The topics showed the flexibility of the corrido form, a key to its longevity. The songwriters sang about freedom riders and drug trafficking, heroes and scoundrels. One of the songs, "Los Lambiscones," which won a prize for Francisco Robles, was about bosses. Laura Isiordia, who emceed the contest in both English and Spanish, translated the title quite effectively by kissing her hand and then smacking her palm to her bottom.

Still, the common thread was the importance of these songs to the cohesion of the community. Maria Garibaldo, for example, sang a corrido by Antonio Ramirez, her grandfather. All contestants got a CD recording of themselves singing, and Garibaldo said she'll send a copy to her grandfather in Jalisco, Mexico. He was so happy to hear she'd be performing his song, she said, that he prayed to Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians, on her behalf.

Angela Miranda also entered the contest because of her family. Miranda heard about the contest on Friday while visiting her 93-year-old mother in California. Her mother -- a longtime corrido fan -- insisted Miranda take part, and Miranda flew back to Oregon early Saturday so she could sing an homage she'd written for Cipriano Ferrel himself, a leader in the farmworker community.

And after Javier Perez-Huerta sang about Don Severo, a 75-year-old man who took part in an immigrant worker freedom ride in 2003, two of Severo's relatives rose from the audience. One, Severo's daughter, thanked Perez-Huerta for the tribute as she wiped her eyes.

The experience levels of the performers varied widely. Some entrants were full bands, complete with matching outfits, and others were individual performers, sometimes even singing a cappella, as did Israel Valencia. As his wife, Cindy Duncan, told it, when he saw the other entrants registering for the contest and the range of instruments, including guitars and accordions, he grew nervous. Not only was he planning to sing unaccompanied, he had never sung in public before -- his background was in songwriting, rather than performing.

"Should we just go home right now?" she remembers him asking. Even after she encouraged him to sign up, he asked a couple more times, "Are you sure?"

She was sure -- and so, it turns out, were the judges: Valencia won the grand prize with his song, "Indignacion Latina."