A collection of thirty-three essays from the program-magazine from the Tejano Conjunto Festival in San Antonio.

Around 1930, a highly popular and distinctive type of accordion music, commonly known as conjunto, emerged among Texas-Mexicans. Manuel Peña's The Texas-Mexican Con;unto is the first comprehensive study of this unique folk style. The author's exhaustive fieldwork and personal interviews with performers, disc jockeys, dance promoters, recording company owners, and conjunto music lovers provide the crucial connection between an analysis of the music itself and the richness of the culture from which it sprang. Using an approach that integrates musicological, historical, and sociological methods of analysis, Peña traces the development of the conjunto from its tentative beginnings to its preeminence as a full-blown style by the early 1960s. Biographical sketches of such major early performers as Narciso Martínez (El Huracán del Valle), Santiago Jiménez (El Flaco), Pedro Ayala, Valerio Longoria, Tony de la Rosa, and Paulino Bernal, along with detailed transcriptions of representative compositions, illustrate the various phases of conjunto evolution. Peña also probes the vital connection between conjunto's emergence as a powerful symbolic expression and the transformation of Texas-Mexican society from a pre-industrial folk group to a community with increasingly divergent socioeconomic classes and ideologies. Of concern throughout the study is the interplay between ethnicity, class, and culture, and Peña's use of methods and theories from a variety of scholarly disciplines enables him to tell the story of conjunto in a manner both engaging and enlightening. This important study will be of interest to all students of Mexican American culture, ethnomusicology, and folklore.

Between Norteño and Tejano Conjunto analyzes the origin, evolution, and dissemination of the norteño and tejano conjunto. This group represents a marginalized local identity that was transformed primarily into an identity of the northeast. It then gave way to the whole of northern México and the American Southwest, and was later assimilated internationally as a mainstream genre. This book provides a long-term historic vision of conjunto and the various musical forms it uses, such as polka, corrido, or canción (song), and, more recently, bolero and cumbia, as well as its transformations and contributions to other musical cultures.

"Readers interested not only in music, but also in ethnic studies and popular culture, will appreciate the broad spectrum covered in Tejano Proud: Tex-Mex Music in the Twentieth Century."--BOOK JACKET.

300 Years of San Antonio & Bexar County captures the iconic stories, moments, people, and places that define one of the oldest communities in the United States. A collection of diverse authors joined forces to produce this richly illustrated and complexly woven thematic telling of the city’s history. From its earliest legacy as home to many indigenous peoples to its municipal founding by the Canary Islanders, a convergence of people from across the globe have settled, sacrificed, and successfully shaped the culture of San Antonio. The result is a 21st-century community that strives to balance diverse heritage with a vibrant economy thanks to stories from the past that provide lessons for the future.