A One of a Kind Look at a Very Special Musical Heritage

books:

	• Musica Tejana: The Cultural Economy of Artistic Transformation (University of Houston Series in Mexican ... Manuel H. Pena Texas A&M University Press, 1999 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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A One of a Kind Look at a Very Special Musical Heritage

If you grew up in South Texas, as I did, then musica Tejana was as pervasive as country and western or rock and roll. In the 1960s you could hear Sunny Ozuna and the Sunliners or Little Joe and the Latinaires. Sunny made it in Top 40 with "Talk to Me" and then returned to his Tejano roots. Little Joe would become La Familia and shape a generation of musicians with songs like "La nubes" and become associated with the rise of Jose Angel Gutierrez and La Raza Unida political movement. Manual Pena gives you the history of various genres of musica Tejana from conjuntos to the late superstar Selena. No other book has managed to cover so much territory and still offer such a coherent view of music and culture.

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Texas-Mexican music, or musica tejana, is not one single music but several musica and musico-literary genres, ensembles, and their styles, encompassing the corrido, cancion, and what author Manuel Pena calls the cancion-corrido. Musica tejana also includes two major regional ensembles and their styles -- the conjunto and the Texas-Mexican version of the orquesta. A more recent crop of synthesizer-driven ensembles and their styles, known since the mid-eighties as "Tejano, " is another representative of musica tejana. Despite their diversity, these ensembles, genres, and styles share two fundamental characteristics: they are all homegrown, and they all speak fundamental social processes shaping Texas-Mexican society. As Pena argues, they represent a transforming cultural economy and its effects on Texas-Mexicans.

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