Tejano Rhythms ... A history lesson on a booming movement in Latin music ... By Amanda M. Saenz, State News MS&U Writer

All across the country, Tejano music is booming. From the valley of Texas to California and back to Michigan, the Tejano music industry has fast become one of the most popular forms of Latin music. So what is Tejano music? It is a unique arrangement of Spanish or “Spanglish” lyrics and songs that incorporate a blend of rock ’n’ roll, country, rhythm and blues, rancheras and polka. Now add an accordion and a bajo sexto guitar (which has 12 strings) and you’ve got Tejano music.

The genre began in 1921 with the birth of conjunto music, which many call “old Tejano.” For the past 70 years or so, Tejano music has been revamped, evolving into many various forms and styles. From increasing record sales to new singers and groups, and even to Tejano-based Internet sites, the music is now in the national limelight. To those who grew up listening to Tejano music, this is no surprise. But to the mainstream music industry and to the media it was a bit astonishing. Not until the music industry and the media began seeing dollar signs did anyone believe that Tejano music would ever survive. Tejano music as it is known today was just beginning in the 1960s and ’70s. The music, which was arranged, recorded and performed by Mexican-Americans or Chicanos in Texas, was known by many names but referred to mostly as Tex-Mex.
In the early 1980s, the music started to become more sophisticated. Numerous bands and Tejano singers were coming from South Texas, and in March 1981 the first Tejano Music Awards were held in the capital city of Tejano itself, San Antonio. From its modest start, the music has changed formats many times. And entering into the ’90s, Tejano has stepped out with a new modernized vibrant sound full of energy and drive. “Tejano music has been around for a long time,” said Chris Irvin, an MSU computer graphics design junior. “More and more people are begging to listen to it. Tejano music has a different vibe. And the more people listen to it the more they like it.” Irvin, who also works under the DJ name “The Coqui,” agreed that Tejano is one of the fastest-growing forms of Latin music, but also added that on the whole Latin music is generally popular. “Latin music is one of the hottest things out there right now,” Irvin said. “From salsa and merengue to banda and Latin hip-hop, it’s all becoming very popular.”

Selena Quintanilla-Perez was the undisputed queen of Tejano music. Selena and her band Los Dinos were one of the earliest groups to give old-style Tex-Mex a facelift. Adding urban dance moves, R&B-influenced vocals and funky keyboard rhythms, Selena and the group emerged into the new trends of Tejano. The new sounds appealed and attracted young, old and even non-Hispanic audiences. Selena became an inspirational idol to fans and the industry of Tejano music. Surviving the male-dominated industry was difficult, but the Grammy award-winner proved that the new Tejano was for everyone, including women and people of different races. Many agree that Selena paved the way for today’s Tejano superstars and upcoming groups. She had big ideas for moving Tejano music into the mainstream, and at the time of her death was just beginning a campaign to cross over into the mainstream music market. After her tragic murder on March 31, 1995, the stage was set for Tejano music to come out. Shortly after, Tejano music was introduced to the world and to those who weren’t familiar with it.

"Tejano music was big even before Selena’s death,” Irvin said. “It just wasn’t that big to those who didn’t know it. But her death was so publicized that people began to wonder and ask who Selena was and what Tejano music was.” Throughout the past two years, the Tejano music market has increased dramatically. The newly popular industry is a very in-demand multimillion-dollar business. “Tejano music is becoming very popular everywhere,” horticulture freshman America Zarate said. “The death of Selena opened the minds of many who never listened to Tejano music before. I never used to listen to it that much, but I started listening after I heard Selena for the first time.” This industry has a major following of loyal and deeply devoted fans. Even if Tejano music loses interest in the overall industry, it is sure to be kept alive in the hearts of its fans.

The late twentieth century has witnessed some notable changes in the music of Latinos in the United States. A "meltdown" has occurred, resulting from styles that have crossed over and overlapped with others. An important example of this crossover comes from Texas, where Música Norteña (more particularly the Texan-Mexican conjunto) and orquesta have witnessed a dramatic convergence. The traditional orquesta, as epitomized by Little Joe y la Familia, has virtually disappeared in the 1990s, replaced by such groups as Mazz, La Mafia, and others. These carry on the basic stylistic features that identify the music as "tejano," but the mainstay of the orquesta — the horns — have been replaced by electronic keyboards that imitate the sounds of trumpets and saxophones. At the same time, these ensembles often incorporate the accordion, thus lending them a hybrid character.

Also on the trend-setting Texas scene, the absorption of country western elements into tejano music has intensified since the 1980s. Borrowing from country western is not new to tejanos (it took place as early as the 1960s), but in the 1980s and 1990s, this absorption has accelerated. Thus, conjunto performers such as Emilio Navaira and Roberto Pulido, and especially The Texas Tornados, a new group made up of veteran musicians (Freddie Fender, Flaco Jimenez, Doug Sahm), have fused conjunto with country western to produce a novel sound that adds a new dimension to tejano music. [From the Thomson/Gale Website]

Tejano  (Spanish for "Texan") and Tex-Mex music are names given to various forms of folk and popular music originating among the Mexican-descended Tejanos of Central and South Texas. In recent years artists such as Selena Quintanilla have transformed Tejano music from primarily a local, ethnic form of music to a genre with wide appeal in North America, Latin America and beyond. Central to the evolution of early Tejano music was the blend of traditional Mexican forms such as the corrido, and Continental European styles introduced by German and Czech settlers in the late 19th century. In particular, the accordion was adopted by Tejano folk musicians at the turn of the 20th century, and it became a popular instrument for amateur musicians in Texas and Northern Mexico. Small bands known as orquestas, featuring amateur musicians, became a staple at community dances. Narciso Martinez (1911-1992) gave Tejano accordion playing a new virtuosity in the 1930s, when he adopted the two button row accordion. At the same time, he formed a group with Santiago Almeida, a bajo sexto (twelve string bass guitar) player. Their new musical style, known as conjunto soon became the popular music of the working class Tejano. Flaco Jimenez (1939-), the son an accordionist and grandson of a man who had learned the instrument from a German immigrant, carried on Martinez's tradition of accordion virtuosity and became a fixture on the international World Music scene by the 1980s.

In the 1950s and 1960s, rock and roll and country music made inroads, and electric guitars and drums were added to conjunto combos. Also, performers such as Little Joe added both nuances of jazz and R&B, and a Chicano political consciousness. In the 1980s, electronic instruments and synthesizers increasingly dominated the sound, and Tejano music increasing appealed to bilingual country and rock fans in the Southwest. In the early 1990s, Selena Quintanilla Perez (1971-1995) and her band Los Dinos infused pop and cumbia (a lilting Colombian dance rhythm) into Tejano music, making the genre popular with non-Mexican Latinos and Latin Americans. In the wake of her murder, Selena's music received attention from a mainstream American audience as well.

At the turn of the 21st century, today's Tejano music, while far more pop-oriented than in its Depression era roots, is one of the most vital regional musical styles in the United States. The term Tex-Mex is also used in American rock and roll for Tejano-influenced performers such as the Sir Douglas Quintet, Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, Louie and the Lovers, The Champs with "Tequila", and the Texas Tornados, featuring Flaco Jimenez, Freddy Fender, Augie Meyer, and Doug Sahm. [From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

TEJANO. The term Tejano, derived from the Spanish adjective tejano or (feminine) tejana (and written in Spanish with a lower-case t), denotes a Texan of Mexican descent, thus a Mexican Texan or a Texas Mexican. The term received greater currency at the end of the twentieth century than previously with subsequent changes in nuance and usage. It encompasses cultural manifestations in language, literature, art, music, and cuisine. As an adjective, Tex-Mex is a recently coined term related to, but not synonymous with, Tejano. Broader terms used at different times or for different segments of this ethnic group are Hispanic American, Latin American, Mexican, Mexican American, and Chicano.qv As early as 1824, Miguel Ramos Arispe, author of the (Mexican) Constitution of 1824,qv referred to the citizens of Texas as Tejanos in correspondence with the town council of Bexar.

After the Mexican War of Independence and the establishment of a federal government, the term Coahuiltejano denoted the citizens of the Mexican state of Coahuila and Texas.qv Hispanics in Texas identified themselves simply as Tejanos as early as January 1833, when leaders at Goliad used the term. The term Méjico-Tejano appeared in print in 1855, when the San Antonio newspaper El Bejareño reported a letter by José Antonio Navarro read at the second meeting of the Spanish-speaking members of the Bexar County Democratic party. Throughout the nineteenth century, Mexican (mexicano) was the term generally used in popular reference for a Mexican national or a Mexican American. As the boundaries of Texas changed to include the Nueces Strip, Laredo, and El Paso, so too did the term Tejano come to include the Hispanic and Mexican residents of those areas.

Historians have applied the term specifically, perhaps anachronistically, to those Mexican Texans in Spanish Texas.qv to distinguish them from residents of other regions, and in Texas from the end of the Spanish era in 1821 to Texas Independence in 1836, in contradistinction to the Texan or Anglo-American residents of that time and of the Republic of Texas.qv Increasingly, Tejano, as a term denoting regional identity, referred to Mexican Texans of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and to the Hispanic Texans of the Spanish era. The term occurred with greater frequency in speech and written forms as the political activity of the ethnic group became pronounced, particularly following the Chicano movement of the mid-1960s. Tejano is now widely enough used that it is considered a naturalized item in the Texas lexicon. [From The Handbook Of Texas ONLINE]