Blog: Your source for topics related to the Frontera Collection

Mexican Americans have produced memorable musical fusions over the past half-century. Best known perhaps are two California strains: the salsa-rock of Carlos Santana from San Francisco and the blues-meets-jarocho sound of Los Lobos in Los Angeles. A lesser known but equally enduring style comes from the Lone Star State: Tejano rock. It’s a blend of melodic Tex-Mex accordion, edgy electric guitar, and a touch of raucous rockabilly. 

Little is known about the life of violinist Melquíades Rodríguez, not even when or how he lost his eyesight. His disability, however, earned him the stage name of El Ciego Melquíades, also known as “The Blind Fiddler.” Rodríguez represents a bygone era in Tex-Mex music when small orquestas típicas and rural string bands were still popular. 

Los Tigres del Norte, the world’s premiere norteño band, started out as an actual band of brothers playing corridos they learned from old-timers in their tiny hometown in northwestern Mexico. From the very start, leader and older brother Jorge Hernandez saw music as a window on his working-class culture and way of life. The goal was not just to entertain but also to communicate culturally with the outside world.

Rio Records is one of those legendary labels that came to be identified with not just a musical genre but a movement. Though the label was short-lived, some of the biggest names in Tex-Mex conjunto music made their first recordings for Rio. They include three accordion players – Flaco Jimenez, Tony de la Rosa and Fred Zimmerle – who went on to become big stars in South Texas and beyond. In this blog post, Frontera Collection founder Chris Strachwitz tells the story of Hymie Wolf and the creation of Rio Records.

Conjunto music, the accordion style so popular with Mexican Americans throughout the Southwest, comprises a cornerstone of the Frontera Collection. Yet conjunto as such does not appear on the list of Top 20 genres compiled for my book about the Frontera archive and published in 2012 by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press. That fact points to a confusion about the term that sometimes stumps even fans familiar with the genre.

Flaco Jimenez, the great Tex-Mex accordion player who brought international attention to a genre often overlooked by the mainstream music industry, was honored recently with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Recording Academy. Jimenez, 75, became one of only five Latin American or Spanish artists to ever receive the award in more than 50 years. Past winners include Brasil’s Antonio Carlos Jobim (2012), Mexico’s Armando Manzanero (2014), Puerto Rico’s Tito Puente (2003) and Spain’s Andrés Segovia (1986).

One of the secret treasures of the Frontera Collection is the amount of vintage Cuban music it contains. Among the most popular and longest lived bands is La Sonora Matancera, which celebrates its 90th anniversary this year. There are some 140 discs in the archives, mostly old 78s, by the iconic Afro-Cuban conjunto, founded in 1924 in the province of Matanzas. However, not all the titles are credited to the band itself. 

Veteran Mexican singer Gerardo Reyes, whose popular touch and unpretentious demeanor earned him the nickname "El Amigo del Pueblo" (The Friend of the People), died February 25 after battling liver cancer. He was 79.

When it comes to bands with longevity, the Rolling Stones may be the elders of rock n’ roll. But the 52-year-old British group is still wet behind the ears compared to Mexico’s Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, founded 117 years ago. Now in its 5^th generation, the mariachi known as “el major mariachi del mundo” -- the best in the world -- is on an extensive U.S. tour through the end of the year. Starting this Cinco de Mayo weekend in Tampa, Florida, the revered ensemble has 29 dates currently scheduled, hopscotching the border from Tijuana to Topeka and Guadalajara to Costa Mesa. A complete tour schedule is posted here at MariachiMusic.com, a San Antonio-based website dedicated exclusively to the genre.