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It's past midnight at Dance Across Texas, a popular dance club in Austin where nearly 2000 bodies are pressed up against the stage in anticipation of tonight's show.

This is not just any performance, this is a Tejano show. The very name means Texan in Spanish. The term Tejano has come to define regional TexMex music, and tonight it's Emilio Nevida and his group Rio from San Antonio, Texas. With hits like "Naciste Para Mi", they have become one of the most popular bands in Tejano music. The popularity of Emilio Nevida and other interpreters of Tejano music is selling out concerts and packing glitzy new nightclubs throughout the Southwest.

Another sign of Tejano music's popularity is that, in the last two years, radio stations across the Southwest, California and in Mexico are changing to a Tejano music format, dropping their contemporary pop or salsa formats and switching to a Tejano style.

Ramiro Burr is an entertainment reporter who covers at the Tejano music scene for the San Antonio Express-News. He says that Tejano music, which was once thought of as the traditional music of older generations, now has legions of younger fans.

With its sounds of the accordion, the bass and the guitar, Tejano music came out of the Norteno style, developed along the Texas-Mexico border. This style, also called Conjunto, was born when Mexican and Mexican-American musicians borrowed the accordion from their German and Czech neighbors in Texas. Tejano roots can also be traced to the early orchestra sounds of Little Jo and La Familia and others like Sonny Ozuna from the late fifties and sixties. Tejano music of the nineties consists of rancheras, polkas, ballads, and cumbias. With influences of pop, rap country and rock.

21-year-old Selena Quintanilla from Corpus Christi, Texas has been number one on the regional Mexican charts of Billboard Magazine for the past seven months. Selena and other young artists have added their own touches to the music.

In the past year alone, Tejano music sales have exploded from 3 million in 1980 to an estimated 16 million dollars in 1992. Artists like La Mafia, Selena and Moz can now sell more than 1 million records.

Major record companies like Capitol, EMI, Sony, and Warner Brothers have noticed that Tejano music's enormous market potential. They've signed on artists who previously recorded for small regional labels. Now their sales have escalated. This year, the 13th annual Tejano Music Awards were broadcast live for the first time via satellite to 32 markets, many of them outside of Texas. Another sign that Tejano music is reaching out beyond traditional borders is that this year the band which was recognized as the most promising in Tejano music is fronted by an African-American. Dee Burleson, lead singer of a group called Culturas, believes that this boom in Tejano music has only just begun.

Major corporations are also recognizing this music's potential. Coca-Cola, Miller Light and GMC Trucks are just a few of the many investors in this musical style. For Latino USA en Austin, I'm Elena Quesada.