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During the funeral services of Mexico’s beloved pop singer José José this month, a tune was played that surely touched the hearts of most Mexicans, especially those watching from afar. The song is...
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Music lovers who explore the Frontera Collection for their favorite hit songs may be occasionally disappointed or even perplexed. For example, how could a musical archive dedicated to Mexican...
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El Ciego Melquíades, also known as “The Blind Fiddler,” represents a bygone era in Tex-Mex music when small orquestas típicas and rural string bands were still popular. Though little is known about...
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Singer Eva Garza launched her singing career as a teenager in San Antonio, Texas, and emerged as one of the few Mexican-American artists to gain international acclaim throughout the Americas. An...
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Eva Quintanar was a prolific composer, instrumentalist, singer, and musical director during the 1940s and ’50s in Los Angeles, and one of the few women to take leadership roles in the male-dominated...
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Flor Silvestre is a Mexican singer, actress, and equestrienne whose career on stage, screen, and television spans more than seven decades. She is best known to international audiences as part of...
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Fred Zimmerle (1931-1998) was born in San Antonio of German and Mexican ancestry, a heritage that embodied the cultural fusion of the border region of South Texas. He became one of the most popular...
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José Alfredo Jiménez (1926-1973) was by far the most important, prolific, and popular composer of música ranchera in Mexico during the 20th century. His extraordinary repertoire of more than 1,000...
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Lalo Guerrero, the son of immigrants from a poor barrio in Tucson, Arizona, was a pioneering musician whose bilingual songs and bicultural persona earned him the honorary title "The Father of...
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In 1939, as the Depression was winding down and a new world war was heating up, Lalo Guerrero was still a struggling musician seeking to make his mark. He was newly married and dirt poor, with a son...
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Las Hermanas Padilla, sometimes billed as the Andrew Sisters of Mexican music due to their pitch-perfect harmonies, was one of the most popular and prolific Mexican vocal duets of the 1930s and ’40s...
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Los Alegres de Terán, a vocal duet founded by a pair of humble migrant workers from northern Mexico, stands as one of the most influential, long-lived and commercially successful regional music acts...
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Los Cadetes de Linares was a popular norteño duo composed in its prime by Homero Guerrero and Lupe Tijerina, both from the town of Linares, Nuevo Leon, south east of Monterrey, Mexico. They were...
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Los Donneños, a duet formed in the late 1940s in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, were pioneers in the evolution of norteño music during the 1950s. They went on to become one of the first Tex-...
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During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Los Madrugadores (The Early Risers) became the most popular group in Mexican-American music in the U.S. The folk ensemble was started by Pedro J. González,...
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The four brothers who make up Los Tigres del Norte, the world’s premier Mexican norteño band, have been playing corridos since they were boys growing up in Mexico. In keeping with the music’s oral...
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Los Tremendos Gavilanes, the duo of Salomón Prado and Juan Torres, was founded in 1962 at the dawn of the modern age of norteño music. In the 1960s and ’70s, they achieved enormous popularity on...
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During most of the 20th century, the world of Latin pop music was dominated by a handful of countries – Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, and of course, Spain. But in the 1950s, an exception to that rule...
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Mid-century Mexico was the hub of the Latin American entertainment industry, a leader in music and film production for the continent. But breaking into that establishment was not easy, especially for...
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Lydia Mendoza (1916-2007) was one the most enduring and highly honored female artists to hail from the immigrant Mexican-American communities of the Southwest United States. Nicknamed “La Alondra De...
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Ed. Note: This the first in a series of biographies of artists based on information provided by family members, friends, or colleagues who contacted us by email (agurza@ucla.edu) or through our blog’...
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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...
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Memo Salamanca was an important composer, arranger, and bandleader who played a prominent role in the popularity of Afro-Cuban dance music that swept Mexico in the 1950s. Salamanca was associated...
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Miguel Aceves Mejía (1915-2006) is one of the leading exponents of Mexican folkloric music, with a gifted, versatile voice that made him a star throughout the Spanish-speaking world....
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Narciso Martínez, nicknamed “El Huracán del Valle” (the Hurricane of the Valley) for his fast and powerful accordion playing, is acknowledged as the father of conjunto music. He was the genre’s first...
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The pantheon of pioneers in conjunto music includes artists who are household names to fans and students of the genre. Among the most recognized are names such as Santiago Jimenez and...
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Accordionist, vocalist, and songwriter Ramón Ayala is a pioneer of norteño music who has sustained an active recording and performing career for almost half a century. As part of the trail-blazing...
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Until her recent death, singer Rita Vidaurri (1924–2019) stood as the last surviving star of what is considered a Golden Age of female vocalists from San Antonio, during the 1930s and ’40s. Like her...
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This year marked the 50th anniversary of the National Chicano Moratorium, the massive anti-war march in East Los Angeles held on August 29, 1970. The milestone inspired major media retrospectives on...
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Santiago Almeida was an exceptional bajo sexto player who gained a historic place in the pantheon of Mexican-American music as the pioneering partner of famed accordionist Narciso Martinez. Together...
