The Song Planner

Tejano / Tex-Mex / Chicano Latin

familyStarted c. 1936Peak 1948-1960; 1964-1969; 1990-1995Last big hit still active

Located in 1 route

Latin / Música Latina → Tejano / Tex-Mex / Chicano Latin

Start with the squeezebox: a two-row button accordion trading runs with the bajo sexto, that fat twelve-string baritone guitar that anchors the low end. Underneath sits a polka or ranchera pulse — German and Czech dance rhythms that Mexican-American Texans borrowed and made their own, plus the cumbia's loping two-step. That conjunto core is the family's bedrock, but the sound stretches wide. Add brass and the swing of an orquesta. Add a Hammond B-3, horns, and English-language soul harmonies. Add Fender guitars, a backbeat, country pedal steel, or 808s and Spanglish rhymes. Tempos run from a slow borderland waltz to a hard-charging polka. The mood is celebratory and rooted, party music for weddings, dance halls, and quinceañeras, but it carries Chicano identity as text — songs about la raza, farmworkers, the barrio, and the border itself. Whatever the instrumentation, it sings in two languages and answers to both Mexico and the United States.

History

The family was born along the Texas-Mexico border in the early twentieth century, when Mexican-American musicians picked up the button accordion that German, Czech, and Polish settlers brought to Texas and paired it with the bajo sexto. Narciso Martínez, the "Father of Conjunto," and bajo sexto man Santiago Almeida codified the duo in the 1930s, transposing European polkas and waltzes into a working-class dance sound. After World War II, Beto Villa invented the orquesta Tejana — a horn-driven big-band style mixing ranchera with American swing — and Isidro López added vocals and crooner polish. In the 1950s and '60s the music splintered outward: Ritchie Valens carried it into rock and roll, San Antonio's West Side Sound bred Chicano soul through Sunny Ozuna, and Thee Midniters turned East L.A. garage rock into open Chicano protest. Little Joe Hernández fused everything into la Onda Chicana in the 1970s. The 1990s brought the commercial summit, when "Tejano" became a crossover format and Selena turned it into a national phenomenon before her 1995 murder. Flaco Jiménez carried traditional conjunto to global audiences through the Texas Tornados and countless collaborations, while Kid Frost opened a Chicano rap lane on the West Coast.

The sub-genre landscape

The defining lanes are the ones that pushed the family past the dance hall into wider American music. Chicano Rock is the loudest of these, a through-line from Ritchie Valens to Thee Midniters to Los Lobos that proved the borderland could plug in and chart nationally. Tejano Country runs parallel, where Emilio Navaira and the boom-era stars married accordion-and-keyboard Tejano to Nashville pedal steel and cut English-language country sides. Chicano Rap is the youngest defining branch, Kid Frost and his West Coast heirs grafting Spanglish verses onto funk and oldies samples to give the family a hip-hop voice.

Around that spine sit the roots and the spin-offs. Conjunto, Conjunto Tejano, and Tejano Norteño hold the accordion-and-bajo-sexto bedrock the whole family grew from, while Orquesta Tejana and Polka Tejana preserve the brassy mid-century dance-band era. Tejano, Tex-Mex, and Tex-Mex Rock are the broad umbrella terms; Tejano Pop, Tejano Cumbia, and Tejano Norteño are the 1990s commercial flavors that powered the Selena-era boom.

Chicano Soul and Chicano Latin are the more peripheral spin-offs — the West Side Sound's R&B detour and the pan-Latin fringe — vital to the story but narrower than the rock, country, and rap lanes that now carry the family's name furthest.

Sub-genres in this family

16 sub-genres · 3 written up

Chicano RapChicano RockTejano CountryBorderland BalladChicano LatinChicano SoulConjuntoConjunto TejanoOrquesta TejanaPolka TejanaTejanoTejano CumbiaTejano NorteñoTejano PopTex-MexTex-Mex Rock

Defining artists

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Essential listening

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← Explore Latin / Música Latina

Sources

  • Wikipedia, Tejano music — overview of conjunto origins, orquesta, and the Tejano boom
  • Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) Handbook of Texas — entries on Texas-Mexican Conjunto, Little Joe y la Familia, and Sunny and the Sunliners
  • Wikipedia, Narciso Martínez and Flaco Jiménez — conjunto pioneers and the bajo sexto/accordion pairing
  • Wikipedia, Ritchie Valens, Thee Midniters, Los Lobos, and Chicano rock — Chicano Rock lineage
  • Wikipedia, Como la Flor and Selena — Tejano boom-era crossover and chart history
  • Wikipedia, Frost (rapper) and La Raza (song) — Chicano rap origins; Texas Monthly and Texas Standard features on Tejano and Flaco Jiménez