Annotations for Subject-headings: Conjunto Music

From Arizona, from Lansing, Michigan, all the friends from Lansing, from New York City. Ooh, what a day.

It was that time of year in San Antonio, again. Time for fans of the TexMex accordion to make the pilgrimage to Rosedale Park for the 12th-Annual Tejano Conjunto Festival.

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It's not only a part of the Tejano Chicano culture, but it's an art form, and people from all over the world come to experience it. That's what's special about it.

I didn't know a damn thing about Conjunto music till a few days ago. Now I'm a real fan.

It just brings out the spirit and the heart that has brought to you that you're raised with it, your parents loved it, and you continue to love it as well. It's just there.

See, I grew up listening to Conjunto music when my parents would take us to the dance hall as little kids. So it's not just what we're listening to now, but it's also a way of passing on culture.

The beat. The beat, it just, I mean, it just keeps your body going. You don't have to understand it to enjoy. But if you are fortunate enough to understand the language, pues esta mejor. Que viva conjunto.

This year's festival featured traditional Conjunto as well as its more modern musical cousin, Tejano music. As Elena Quezada reports from Austin, in the last few years, Tejano music is enjoying an unprecedented boom in popularity.

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.

And now, another 40 minutes of continuum, on San Antonio's Numero Uno, Number One Tejano 107FM.

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.

I see the rise of Tejana music as being parallel to the popularity or the rise of Hispanics in this country, economically, politically, culturally. They said the eighties was the decade of the Hispanics, and then they quickly said, "Nope, this is going to go on for a while."

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.

I see that when I go to Tejano shows and I see kids from five, six years old, eight years old, singing the lyrics to these people. Now I go back to '80 and I can't remember a time when they were teens or pre-teens that considered Tejano artists heroes. But now they do. Now they buy their t-shirts, their coffee cups, their caps. That shows me that there's a future for this.

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.

We consider Tejano music like a folk music. It's always been here. It's never changed. It's like country music. But we feel that it's getting stronger now because it's more progressive. Now there's keyboard synthesizers and it's a lot more modern. And I think it's great now because now the young people are turning back to TexMex music and wanting to get more closer to their roots.

$33.39—put the guarantee on here. We have a 30-day guarantee on our cassettes.

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.

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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.

It used to be like almost a mom-and-pop operation. Dad would go out and promote son and daughter for their band or whatever. Now they've got big sponsors and they've got huge industry behind them, and it's a great thing. It's a great, it's a building process and right now it's reaching all around the world. It's a rave thing in Germany right now, and Great Britain. So, Tejano music is finally getting the recognition it deserves.

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.

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