Read Tejano music entry in Wikipedia.
On the Border Music website at the University of Texas at Austin read the essay “Musica fronteriza/Border Music” and read/listen to “The Roots of Tejano and Conjunto Music” (Arhoolie Records)
Hear contemporary conjunto musician Mingo Saldivar play La Monjita de las Piñatas (Source: Accodion Dreams, documentary film by Hector Galan, 2000).
Listen to an interview with Mingo Saldivar on American Routes radio hosted by Nick Spitzer (5:37 min)
Conjunto, the button accordion-based music of South Texas, emerged as the popular music of the Texas-Mexican working class in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As such it represented the interests and aspirations of the gente pobre, the poorest people in Texas-Mexican society. Throughout its history, conjunto has been alternately despised as “low-class” or treasured as an expression of Texas-Mexican art.
Conjunto history may be divided into three periods — from the late nineteenth century to 1935, from 1935 to the end of World War II, and from the end of World War II to the present. In the first period, conjunto was born when German and Czech immigrants brought the diatonic accordion to Mexico and Texas. The earliest music consisted of polkas along with other popular salon dances — schottisches, mazurkas, waltzes, redowas. The Mexican corrido was also prominent. The accordion was played solo or with other instruments on an ad hoc basis. In the second period, more emphasis was placed on Mexican and Latin-American song forms such as the huapango, bolero, and ranchera (country song), and the twelve-string guitar-like bajo sexto became the standard accompaniment to the accordion. Following WWII, the conjunto ensemble took its current form — three row diatonic button accordion, bajo sexto, electric bass, and drum kit. While conjunto is considered dance music whose lyrics often focus on love and romance, there are many songs of political and social oppression, of discrimination and racism, of longing for a former homeland, of back-breaking labor.
Major early figures in conjunto include accordionist Narciso Martinez, “El Huracan del Valle,” who was born in 1911. Martinez and his musical partner Santiago Almeida established the accordion and bajo sexto as the basic constitutents in the conjunto style. Almeida was the first to play the bajo sexto as a solo, melody-line instrument. Martinez concentrated on the right-hand lead of the accordion, disregarding the bass chord accompaniment and thus moving the music away from its “Germanic” roots. Other important early figures in conjunto music are Pedor Ayala, “El Monarca del Acordeon”; Santiago Jimenez Sr., “El Flaco”; and Bruno Villareal, “El Azote del Valle.”
Major conjunto figures in the years following WWII include Valerio Longoria and Tony de la Rosa. Both are widely known for their inclusion of the drum kit, for the replacement of the acoustic upright bass (the tololoche) with the electric bass, for the use of amplification and PA systems, and for more vocal music. Longoria introduced the bolero to conjunto, while de la Rosa slowed the basic tempo of conjunto polkas, which allowed for more emphasis on the melody, more complex fingering techniques, and a smoother, gliding dance form, el tacuachito, which replaced the European-influenced baile de brinquito (the hopping dance). Many contemporary conjunto players perform hybrid music. Such players include Nick Villareal, Esteban Jordan, and Flaco Jimenez. Santiago Jimenez, Jr. is a contemporary player who strives to maintain the conjunto style of the past, basing his playing largely on his father’s style. Conjunto, always a regional music, has in recent years begun to have a national and international following and is now crossing over into other Texas music forms and other national forms such as rock and country-western. –Excerpted from essay by David Romtvedt in Encyclopedia of Country Music (Oxford Univ. Press, 1998).
Listen:
“Ay Te Dejo En San Antonio” (Ranchera), Santiago “Flaco” Jimenez.
“Negra Traicion” (Ranchera), Santiago “Flaco” Jimenez with Los Caminantes.
“El Mexicano-Americano” (Corrido), Los Cenzontles with Santiago “Flaco” Jimenez on accordion.
Leonardo “Flaco” Jimenez (b. San Antonio, Texas, 1939) is a member of what has been called the First Family of Texas Conjunto Music. Flaco’s father, Santiago “El Flaco” Jimenez, Sr., who left his first son Leonardo his nickname (which means “The Skinny One”), was a conjunto accordion pioneer. Flaco’s brother Santiago Jimenez, Jr., is a traditionalist who performs in his father’s style. Known for his fast, flashy, and hard-driving playing, no other conjunto accordionist has done as much to disseminate conjunto music outside of its tradtional audience than Flaco Jimenez. He has performed with musicians such as Ry Cooder, Tish Hinojosa, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, Dwight Yoakam, and Buck Owens. By touring North America, Europe, and Japan, Flaco has brought conjunto to the world. With the Texas Tornados (formed in 1990), Flaco has created a music that combines conjunto‘s Hispanic roots with Angle-American country music and rock.
“Cada Vez Que Cae La Tarde” (Ranchera), Santiago Jimenez, Jr.
“Connie” (Polka), Conjunto Bernal
“Alejamiento Y Regreso” (Ranchera), Los Pavos Reales.
“El Canoero” (Cumbia), Valerio Longoria.
“Corrido de Cesar Chavez”(Corrido), Los Pinguinos Del Norte.
“Atotonilco” (Polka), Tony De La Rosa.
“Pasos Cortos” (Val Bajito), Juan Lopez.
Source for the songs above: Tex Mex Conjunto Classics. American Masters Series, Vol. 4. Arhoolie Records,
1996 . Notes on the film “Chulas Fronteras” Visit with Calexico and Luz de Luna, contemporary bands creating new, eclectic soundscapes from the Southwest. (8:54 min) Source: American Routes radio hosted by Nick Spitzer. Orignally aired June 26, 2002.
Related materials:
“La Musica Nuevo Mexicana: Religious and Secular Music from the Juan B. Rael Collection” An online ethnographic field collection documenting religious and secular music of Spanish-speaking residents of rural Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. I
Accordian Dreams, a musical journey into conjunto, the PBS website for the 2000 film by Hector Galan. This website features sound samples by pioneering and contemporary conjunto performers.