XL cover story

Dueling accordions

How the Texas-bred music made famous by Selena is losing the tug-of-war with Mexico

By Enrique Lopetegui
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Thursday, April 13, 2006

Selena is dead.

Still.

Tejano record sales have dwindled, while more and more radio stations are switching from this Texas-born, cross-cultural genre to Mexican regional and Latin pop.

In the 1990s, the Tejano Music Awards attracted crowds of more than 30,000 to the Alamodome. Fewer than 1,300 showed up to Eagle Pass for the 2006 staging of the event.

The Tejano music industry is in shambles, and state Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos of Texas is among those protesting the potential loss of cultural heritage.

"Tejano music is systematically being removed from local radio stations, and it is simply unacceptable," Barrientos said during a news conference held at the Texas State Capitol on March 22.

Members of the recently formed Austin Tejano Music Coalition joined the senator to pressure radio stations to face the music.

This is Texas, they said, and Texas is the place for Tejano radio.

"Until Tejano radio has been put back on the air on one form or another," Barrientos says, "we will continue to raise awareness and encourage the community to make their voice heard."

But will people tune in?

"We don't decide music trends," says Tom Castro, president of Border Media Partners, the nation's largest private Hispanic radio company, which owns six of the seven Spanish-language radio stations in Austin. "We follow what the market tells us."

And according to Castro (backed by the Billboard charts and Arbitron ratings), what people want is reggaetón, Latin pop and Mexican regional.

It was the latest sign of disaffection for Tejano fans, pampered in the '90s by Selena's and Emilio Navaira's success stories and now facing a sad reality: Tejano is no longer cool.

"There are very few kids playing polka," says Augie Meyers, a veteran of the rock, country and Tejano fields with the Sir Douglas Quintet and Texas Tornados. "Kids are playing what I call 'Florida music,' the hip-hop or whatever works in Florida and New York. In the '50s it used to be wine, women and song. Then came the '60s and it was sex, drugs and rock and roll. Now it's all rap, rehab and rubbers."

Tejano, only 10 years ago the rising star of Texas culture, might not make it past the next generation gap. And that doesn't take into account the cultural gap between longtime Mexican Americans and recent immigrants.

Even though few openly admit it, the battle lines have formed, and the musical armies fly the flags of Tejano vs. Mexicano.

And perhaps, Tejano's greatest ally will be none other than Nashville-based country-and-western music.

'Not a Texas thing, man'

So if Tejano is retreating, why did 100,000 revelers showed up at the Tejano Music Award's Fun Fair in San Antonio's Market Square in March?

And why, despite the lack of airplay, are there are more and more independent artists — tired of waiting for the once-thirsty major labels — recording their own music?

And why is Tejano's biggest convention growing at an amazing speed, attracting the attention of Country Music Television?

"Because Tejano is not a Texas thing, man," 2 two-time Grammy winner Little Joe Hernández says. "They're trying to pigeonhole us to a particular area, but Tejano is widespread. I'm working more than ever now."

It turns out that Tejano had put down deeper — and broader — roots than most observers had noted. All through the 20th century, Texas migrant workers disseminated Tejano and conjunto seeds throughout the U.S. agricultural regions, and, ultimately, to cities with large Mexican American populations.

"We need to break away from the perception that Tejano is only Texas," Little Joe says. "We call it Tejano, but people in Albuquerque, Chicago and other places don't feel part of this (identification), but play our music and, in many cases, they're much better than the bands you find here."

During its heyday in the mid-'90s, Tejano music strutted with the pride of a champion: Selena crossed over into English — although English was her first tongue — won Grammys and packed almost 70,000 fans into Houston's Astrodome for what would be her final concert.

Emilio, as Navaira is known, was considered the biggest male superstar of Tejano — a Vegas newspaper even called him 'Selena with a mustache' — and looked ready for his own breakout.

Supergroup the Texas Tornados — Freddy Fender, Augie Meyers, Flaco Jiménez and Doug Sahm — won Grammys, performed regularly around the country and left a memorable recorded legacy. The list goes on.

Tejano was more than just alive, it was kickin' butt the Texan way.

A migrating musical genre

Then, it all stopped. And Tejano started to bleed.

Selena died at the hands of the president of her fan club.

Fun-loving Emilio stumbled on booze-related problems with the law, and his image never fully recovered.

Doug Sahm, the founder of the Sir Douglas Quintet, died in 1999, and that was the end of the Texas Tornados.

(Encouraging news: The surviving Tornados will release a new studio album with Shawn Sahm, Doug's son.)

Quietly, at the turn of the 21st century, Tejano took a step backward.

Instead of Selena's star power, legions of Selena wannabes flooded the market. Gone the sense of adventure, Tejano became formulaic: a little cumbia Tejana here, a little hip-hop there. Only old-timers continued the conjunto-based groove, but with few young innovators.

Potential pop crossover artists, such as Jennifer Peña, earned success but failed to break out in the manner of Selena.

Ticket and CD sales decreased, and the massive switch of commercial radio stations from Tejano to regional Mexican, or Tejano stations from FM to AM didn't help matters.

For some observers, it was not the decline of Tejano.

This was about "Us and Them."

And who were "them"?

The Mexicans, of course.

"I knew (Mexican) promoters wanted to take Texas — it was the last bastion they needed," Abraham Quintanilla, Selena's father, told San Antonio's Rumbo in late 2004. "They had conquered California, New Mexico, Colorado, they were everywhere. Selena was the center of the Tejano world and when she died, the superstar era was gone and the change started. Mexican promoters realized there was a great market (Mexicans in Texas) and that was it.

In the mid-'90s, BMP's Tom Castro, then owner of Houston's KQQK, the premier Tejano station in Texas, started mixing Tejano and Mexican music.

It didn't work because, Quintanilla believes, Mexicans couldn't relate to an English-speaking DJ. To make things worse, Tejano listeners switched to English stations.

"As far as blaming us for the problems Tejano music has, these are the facts," Castro says, "Even Univision (BMP's competitor) found through their research and experience that pure Tejano stations are not performing and did away with most of their Tejano stations. BMP still has a Tejano station in Dallas, but in Austin, it just got no ratings. We don't have any favoritism of one format over another. What we favor is formats that get audiences."

"All Castro achieved was ruining everything, because after that Tejano stations began playing Mexican music," Quintanilla says. "And look at the (Tejano) thing now. That's my opinion. Tejanos are here, but radios more and more try to please the Mexicans. It was always like that, but now they turned Tejano into a bad word, and it isn't. We're being discriminated in our own land."

Problemas con Spanglish

Five-time Grammy winner Flaco Jiménez goes a little beyond that.

"Everybody talks about 'Tejano this' and 'Tejano that.' What about conjunto? Nobody plays the hard-core stuff anymore," he says. "If it was up to me, I would put the norteños with the Tejanos, with the conjunto and the rockeros, all together. Discrimination in music is the worst thing. Not just Tejano — the whole music industry is a mess."

But there are other problems — the quality of Tejano music itself.

While norteño songs are generally more rudimentary than those of Tejano, lyrically they're often much more imaginative and daring, and not just those from hard-edged narcocorrido artists.

And Spanish-speakers are turned off by Tejano's lack of Spanish proficiency and poetic ambition.

" We don't tell any good stories," Little Joe says. "Tejano came and went through poor production and lack of good lyrics and melodies. The dumbest song I ever wrote got me a BMI award and made a lot of money. It's a stupid little song, 'Pío, pío, pío.' But I use the Chicano lingo, all slang, and people understood and appreciated it. When I write something profound nobody cares, at least not in our market. And yes, we have our own lingo, but mistakes (in Spanish) must be corrected.

"I used to say 'murrir' instead of 'morir' (to die) in Spanish and I corrected it. We shouldn't be intimidated, but we should strive to improve."

Jiménez agrees.

"Some radio stations play Spanish music all the time but the DJs only speak in English," Jiménez says. "They should try to mix it up a little bit. Now they're trying to sing in Spanish, and the Spanish is broken, man. You have to be sure you're correct in pronouncing your words. I'm not the only one who think this way, but you know . . . Sorry if I offended anyone, but reality is reality."

Betting on Las Vegas

The Tejano National Convention and Vegas revue, held in Las Vegas since 2004, might be the music's strongest bet for regeneration.

"We knew this event could work, but we didn't predict the success," says David Chávez, the convention's founder. "In the first year we thought we were going to have 1,500 people and we had 3,000. Last year we had 4,200 people registered, making it the largest Latin music convention in the U.S. I should say the largest Latin convention, period. I've been in a lot of them and their numbers are nowhere near what we have. The success made us move from the Rio (hotel) to the Las Vegas Hilton, and it's a great feeling."

The strategy worked: Compose an event that's attractive to sponsors and media, then reach thousands of would-be tourists and Tejano fans.

The next step: reach millions, "but you can't to that unless it's televised," said Chavez says. He didn't go to Univision; he went to Nashville.

"We went after Country Music Television and said, 'You know, guys, you wanna reach more Latinos? We want more people to understand what Tejano is. Country and Tejano share the same stories of love, cheating, women, family, drinking . . .' They loved the idea and decided to be a partner with us. They give us country, we give them Tejano."

If there is one Tejano artist CMT might nab first, that would be Emilio, who debuted at No. 13 in the country charts with "Life Is Good" (1995) from the album with the same name, becoming a crossover star and solidifying his position as the King of Tejano.

Navaira, recently involved in automobile accidents, performs regularly and maintains legions of fans, but the music industry at large hasn't taken the bait. Is the much-maligned Emilio, Tejano's rebel and most visible face in the country industry, ready for the new challenge?

"I had two wrecks, yeah," says Emilio, after a smoking performance at Univision's Premios a la Música Latina in San Antonio's Majestic Theatre, "I was drinking, but I wasn't drunk. You know, sometimes the cops take it another way. 'Hey, we got Emilio, we're gonna take him in.' But you know what? I deserve it, you know . . . I deserve to take the blame. I understand now. It took me a while. My uncles, friends used to drink in the '60s and it wasn't a big deal. Now it's a big deal and I'm learning. But I don't hurt nobody and I don't mean to hurt nobody. I love my music and my fans and I always deliver. But when my time is off it is my personal time and I like to enjoy it. As long as I don't hurt anybody, I'll be all right."

If Emilio can keep out of trouble, he might be just what CMT ordered.

Bridging the generation gap

An alliance with country music makes sense, but the generational divide and "cool factor" remain thorny for potential Tejano supporters two generations younger than retiring Sen. Barrientos.

Who, for instance, is the next Tejano Bebop Kid?

Maybe Juanito.

"I love Tejano, but I also love Metallica, man," said Juanito Castillo, 17, blind from birth and proficient in 14 instruments. He has released two "progressive Tejano" solo albums and is currently drummer for Steve Jordan. "I'll always have the Tejano thing in me, but I also want to do my own thing and I feel that I'm always forced to please somebody. I want to have my own gig."

Generational tensions plagued the Tejano Music Awards on March 18 in Eagle Pass.

The only Tejano youngsters to have earned commercial success and musical respectability are DJ Kane (an ex-Kumbia King rapper who knows where to look for material and producers) and AB Quintanilla III (Selena's brother, former member of Los Dinos, who just left Los Kumbia Kings; a brilliant producer who has just scored another No. 1 in Mexico with a reggaetón version of 'Pachuco,' a '90s punk anthem by Maldita Vecindad).

DJ Kane, the biggest solo star in Urban Tejano, last year won a Tejano Music Award in the Urban category. This year, he was again nominated and was favored to win. In the same category: Grupo Vida, the hands-down Showband of the Year two years in a row.

However, to some in the media room it was odd than a not-precisely teenager, country-leaning band was nominated in the Urban category.

The winner was Vida, and backstage, a stunned and dejected DJ Kane tried to remain polite and graceful, signing autographs and posing for photographs. When asked about Vida's surprise win, he was honest and straightforward, "It's a lot of (expletive)," DJ Kane said with a sad smile. "A bunch of old people (voting). You know . . . It's the Tejano thing."

The third annual Tejano National Convention & Vegas Revue, to be held at the Las Vegas Hilton from July 14-18, wants to be a better Tejano thing. And Country Music Television's presence in the event for the first time marks a potential turning point.

"CMT's audience understands the power of storytelling through music," says the cable network's executive vice president/general manager, Brian Philips. "Country music and Tejano share rich, intertwined themes of family, tradition, love and pride. We believe that forging this new partnership with the Tejano National Convention will spur the growth and preservation of both American music forms."

Then, the punch line: "CMT is yet to determine the scope of its coverage."

Still, the very fact that somehow CMT will be present opens up potentially unlimited cross-pollination between Tejano and country music. Will the third edition impress CMT and "reach millions," as Chávez projects?

"If people see Willie Nelson with Little Joe, Emilio with Alan Jackson or Los Lonely Boys with Los TexManiacs, that's what you want," Chávez says. "We're opening the doors, and once the door is open, it's going to be big."

Enrique Lopetegui is the San Antonio-based music editor of the newspaper Rumbo.