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    The Texas-Mexican Conjunto
    History of a Working-class Music

    Manuel Peña (Author)

    9780292780804

    Paperback / softback, published 1 March 1985

    234 pages
    22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.454 kg

    This book does a magnificent job of tracing the history of conjunto music and musicians, and does much more.... PeÑa presents a highly convincing explanation for conjunto music as an act of working-class self-affirmation and opposition to the upwardly aspirant middle class with its self-consciously Americanized orquesta music.... Fascinating and well-researched.
    (American Anthropologist)

    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.

    • Preface
    • Acknowledgments
    • Introduction
    • Part 1: Music and Musicians: A Descriptive History
    • 1. Origins: Texas-Mexican Music Prior to 1930
    • 2. Los MÚ
      sicos de Ayer: The Formative Years
    • 3. La Nueva GeneraciÓ
      n: Stylistic Consolidation (1948-1960)
    • 4. Post-1960 Conjunto: The Limits of a Tradition
    • Part II: The Evolution of a Style: Economic, Social, and Symbolic Dimensions
    • 5. La Gente Pobre: The Social Base of Conjunto Music
    • 6. Social and Symbolic Dimensions of Conjunto: From Ascendancy to Decline
    • Appendices
    • References
    • Selected Discography
    • Index

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