Tejano

Tejano, popular music style fusing Mexican, European, and U.S. influences. Its evolution began in northern Mexico (a variation known as norteño) and Texas in the mid-19th century with the introduction of the accordion by German, Polish, and Czech immigrants.

Distinguished primarily by instrumentation and orchestration, three forms of Tejano (Spanish: “Texan”) music developed. The original form, conjunto, which was seen as more déclassé than mariachi music, featured the accordion as the melodic lead instrument backed rhythmically by the bajo sexto (a 12-string guitar) and an acoustic bass guitar. Its initial repertoire included waltzes, polkas, mazurkas, and rancheros. In modern conjunto, a drum kit was added and the acoustic bass replaced by an electric one. Conjunto’s best-known performers in the 1920s and ’30s, accordionists Pedro Ayala and Narciso Martínez, were succeeded by Tony de la Rose and Leonardo (“Flaco”) Jiménez in conjunto’s “golden age” in the late 1940s and early ’50s.

In the 1930s Tejano’s second major form, banda, or orquesta, emerged. Tejano big bands, most notably La Orquesta de Beto Villa, building upon the big band lineup popularized by swing bands, quickly incorporated Mexican folk music and conjunto traditions. By the mid-1950s bandleader and vocalist Isidro López had made crooning a staple of banda; however, his addition of the bajo sexto and the accordion to the orchestral lineup was reversed by Oscar Martínez, whose band featured a brass-oriented instrumentation that would remain the template for banda (two trumpets, alto and tenor saxophones, guitar, bass, and drums), which peaked in the 1970s.

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Rejecting horns, saxophones, and the accordion even as it embraced a largely conjunto repertoire, Tejano’s third musical form, grupo, originated in the 1960s with keyboard instruments and synthesizers as its foundation. Grupo’s most famous performer, Selena, became an international celebrity before being killed in 1995. A reflection of the growing Mexican American cultural pride in the last half of the 20th century, all three forms of Tejano have continued their popularity into the 21st century.