(photo: Flaco Jimenez, me, Santiago Jimenez, Jr. abd Adam Bosquez at Santiago’s studio in San Antonio, September, 2014)
I produce albums and publish regularly on musical topics. I am also involved in planning and producing major traditional music festivals and a number of applied ethnomusicological and public folklore projects I describe below.
My main research focuses on the cultural sustainability of traditional music making in the United States with an emphasis on the conjunto music culture of Tejano South Texas and son huasteco. My work also investigates migration, transnationalism, and the diverse regional impacts of globalization and Latino migration as expressed in contemporary Mexican migrant music making.
I am fortunate to be the Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio where, among other responsibilities, I produce the annual Tejano Conjunto Festival en San Antonio, which is now entering its 41st year!
In 2020 I launched a comprehensive survey of the varied musical responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin American and Latino-American communities and have built an extensive playlist of música del coronavirus. I completed writing a comprehensive survey titled Maldito Coronavirus! Mapping Latin American Musical Responses to the Pandemic Moment (with co-writer JA Strub), which is forthcoming from Equinox Publishing Ltd.
I founded the Festival of Texas Fiddling, which is now in its 9th year. I serve as Artistic Director for the Festival, which occurs the first weekend of December every year at Twin Sisters Dance Hall in Blanco, Texas. I also started the Festival of Virginia Fiddling, held each year in Richmond and now in its 3rd year.
I am currently working on a book project called Conjunto: Sustainability and Cultural Heritage in Texas in partneershiop with Texas Folklife. This interdisciplinary book is an exploration of contemporary conjunto music and conjunto culture in Texas and the first study to situate the broader significance of conjunto in terms of historical activism, Tejano cultural geography, and ethnomusicological theory relating to cultural sustainability and Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) issues. Conjunto music culture now flourishes in a network of community-embedded institutions and events that have developed outside of the usual channels of cultural activism in the U.S. for reasons of regional, ethnic, class, and commercial marginality. My book argues that the largely unrecognized and unheralded success story of conjunto music in fact stands as a model for in the ways that the intangible heritage of regional cultures in the United States can be integrated into sustainable systems of development, education, and presentation.
I have published a few articles on this project (list of publications is below) and look forward to completing the book soon
me with my good friend and musical hero Felipe Perez. And a 1950s Macias bajo
I have also been involved in a multi-year project editing an as-told-to memoir of legendary conjunto accordionist Santiago Jimenez, Jr, which is titled El Chief de San Antonio and will be done hopefully soon!
Other music work:
My newest LP release is a rare recording of Lorenzo Martinez and Santiago Jimenez, Jr, forthcoming in early 2023 on my label, Zarza Records. This recording captures an informal jam session between legendary Hall of Fame conjunto accordionist Lorenzo and even more legendary Santiago, who here shows off his skill on the bajo sexto. Both grew up in Ghost Town on the Westside of San Antonio. Lorenzo originally learned to play accordion from conjunto founder Santiago Jimenez, Sr. and had his first gig backed up by Flaco Jimenez (Santiago’s older brother) at the tender age of 12! Santiago is an NEA Heritage Fellow and a winner of the National Medal of Arts awarded by President Obama in 2016. This record is an extraordinarily rare and interesting documentary recording on limited edition colored vinyl. It will be available on the Zarza Records website.
I co-produced this new album of originals and classics by conjunto hall of fame accordionist Felipe Perez. This incredible new album (featuring the “Coronavirus Polka”!) is going to be released March 10, 2023 by Jalopy Records of Brooklyn
Here I am with Felipe in front of the studio in San Antonio during a break in recording, May, 2022
I have recently helped Chief Records release their very first LP! Chief, of course, has a long history of 45s and CDs stretching back until the 1980s, but amazingly actually has never released an LP until this one! It’s also on colored vinyl.
Here is the 2nd Santiago Jimenez, Jr. LP I helepd Chief Records get released:
I have been involved in recording, co-producing, and writing the notes for a number of albums of music by Texas Mexican musicians with Spring Fed Records, the recording arm of the Center for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University.
This is historic recording of two sons of conjunto founder Santiago Jimenez, Sr playing all originals. Eddie is Santiago Jimenez, Jr.’s twin brother. He wrote all of the songs on his father’s two row accordion.
Here’s a sample of four of the Jimenez brothers playing together at the time of the recording:
One of the recordings I completed with Spring Fed is of Felipe Pérez, a conjunto accordion master from Corpus Christi who has been performing professionally since 1950, Felipe is a 2018 inductee into the Conjunto Hall of Fame at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio. I was honored to introduce him and talk about his life at the ceremony.
Another recording I co-produced is of the unsurpassed fiddler Belen Escobedo, who plays rare and beautiful songs and tunes of the Texas-Mexican borderlands. Belen was the recipient of the Texas Master Fiddler award at the 2017 Festival of Texas Fiddling, and in 2018 she was a featured artist at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Washington. She has since appeared at many festivals across the country, including the National Folk Festival and the Richmond Folk Festival.
In 2017, I co-produced and wrote the liner notes for a cd titled “Old School Polkas Del Ghost Town,” released by Spring fed Records, This cd features new recordings of Texas-Mexican Conjunto music by Lorenzo Martinez and Ramon “Rabbit” Sanchez, two of the finest musicians to come out of the Conjunto homeland in South Texas.
Lorenzo died in October 2020 but his spirit, music, and influence live on forever.
Here’s a video from the release event we held in San Antonio:
In 2014, I co-produced (with Charlie Lockwood of Texas Folklife) a cd titled “Traditional Music Of Texas, Volume 1: Fiddle Recordings From The Texas Folklife Archives”. You can hear it on Spotify.
Grupo Estanzuela Tour, March, 2022
With support from a seed grant from the Lisle Foundation to the Festival of Texas Fiddling, and in partnership with the Center for Poular Music, I organized a weeklong tour of Grupo Estanzuela from Tlacotalpan, Veracruz that went to East Tennessee State University, Middle Tennessee State University, University of Georgia, and the Global Education Center in Nashville. Footage and more pictures will be posted soon! The original poster has the date during COVID when we had to reschedule.
My recent publications on music topics:
“Conjunto Dance Halls of San Antonio,” in Stan Renard, William Glenn, Mark Brill, eds., History of Music in San Antonio (University of Texas -San Antonio Press, 2022)
“Orquesta and Tejano Music in San Antonio,” in Stan Renard, William Glenn, Mark Brill, eds., History of Music in San Antonio (University of Texas -San Antonio Press, 2022)
“Norteño Music in San Antonio,” in Stan Renard, William Glenn, Mark Brill, eds., History of Music in San Antonio (University of Texas -San Antonio Press, 2022)
“The Tejano Conjunto Festival en San Antonio and Cultural Sustainability” co-written with Cristina Ballí, in Stan Renard, William Glenn, Mark Brill, eds., History of Music in San Antonio (University of Texas -San Antonio Press, 2022)
“Conjunto Dance Halls of San Antonio,” in Stan Renard, William Glenn, Mark Brill, eds., History of Music in San Antonio (University of Texas-San Antonio Press, 2023) forthcoming (website for the book is here)
“Orquesta and Tejano Music in San Antonio,” in Stan Renard, William Glenn, Mark Brill, eds., History of Music in San Antonio (University of Texas-San Antonio Press, 2023) forthcoming (website for the book is here)
“Norteño Music in San Antonio,” in Stan Renard, William Glenn, Mark Brill, eds., History of Music in San Antonio (University of Texas-San Antonio Press, 2023) forthcoming (website for the book is here)
“The Tejano Conjunto Festival en San Antonio and Cultural Sustainability” co-written with Cristina Ballí in Stan Renard, William Glenn, Mark Brill, eds., History of Music in San Antonio (University of Texas-San Antonio Press, 2023) forthcoming (website for the book is here)
“Luthiers of San Antonio” in Stan Renard, William Glenn, Mark Brill, eds., History of Music in San Antonio (University of Texas -San Antonio Press, 2023) forthcoming (website for the book is here)
“Huapanguitos pa seguir aguantando en cuarentena: Mexican Musical Communities, DIY Media, and Emergent Digital Spaces of Wellbeing during COVID-19,” co-authored with J.A. Strub, in Maurizio Agamennone, Daniele Palma, and Giulia Sarno, eds., Sounds of the Pandemic: Accounts, Experiences, Investigations, Perspectives in times of Covid-19 (Routledge, 2022).
“#QuédateEnCasa y Huapango! Diasporic Community and Musical Wellbeing in Streamed Live Performances of Música Huasteca,” co-authored with J.A. Strub. Journal of Music, Health and Well-Being (Autumn, 2021). https://www.musichealthandwellbeing.co.uk/musickingthroughcovid19
“The Magical Fiddling of Belen Escobedo of San Antonio,” Fiddler Magazine, Fall 2018 (behind a paywall)
“Reimagined Old Time Music Cultures in the Trainhopping Punk Rock South,” in Shawn Chandler Bingham and Lindsey Freeman, eds., The Bohemian South: Creating Countercultures, from Poe to Punk. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017)
“Música, Muerte, y Jaripeo: Sound, Gender, and Violence in Diasporic Mexican Rodeo Videos,” Music and Sound in American Culture Special Issue, Journal of American Culture 38: 1 (March, 2015): 63-75.
“Introduction: Music and Sound in American Culture,” Journal of American Culture 38: 1 (March, 2015): 1-3.
“Ethnographic and Folkloristic Study of Popular Culture,” in Gary Burns, ed., A Companion to Popular Culture (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015)
“Voz de Pueblo Chicano: Sustainability, Teaching, and Intangible Cultural Transfer in Conjunto Music,” Journal of American Culture 34:1 (March, 2011): 36-48.
“Conjunto as Sustainable Music,” Tonantzin: Tejano Conjunto Festival en San Antonio, Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, San Antonio, Texas, 2010.
“Latino Migrant Music and Identity in the Borderlands of the New South,” Journal of American Culture 32:2 (June, 2009): 114-125. Awarded the 2010 Carl Bode Award for Outstanding Article in the Journal of American Culture in 2009 by the American Culture Association
“Sé Que Voy a Regresar: Migrant Music and Globalization in the Nuevo South,” American Studies 31:1 (May, 2008): 1-24.
“Conjunto as Sustainable Music,” Tonantzin: Tejano Conjunto Festival en San Antonio, Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, San Antonio, Texas, 2010.
“Tradition, History, and Music in a Globalized Perspective, or, Considering Banjos and Kayagums in Seoul,” The Korea Fulbright Review (2008): 25-29
Reprinted as “Tradition, History, and Music in a Globalized Perspective,” in Korea Fulbright Infusion Magazine 1 (2008): 24-28.
Tradition and Music in a Globalized Perspective, or Considering Banjos and Kayagums in Seoul,” Korea Fulbright Review (2008): 25-29.
“Making Music and Sustaining Tradition,” The Korea Times, 12 June 2008
The Festival of Texas Fiddling
I am the founder and Artistic Director of the Festival of Texas Fiddling, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit headquartered in San Antonio. This is the first and only festival dedicated to the full array of ethnic and regional styles of Texas fiddling, all held in historic Twin Sisters Dance Hall in Blanco, Texas the first weekend of December every year.
The 2020 6th Annual Festival of Texas Fiddling was streamed on YouTube, check it out here for free.
Subscribe to our channel on YouTube and Follow us on facebook
The new webpage for the Festival is right here: Texasfiddle.org
I published often in the major old time music magazine called The Old Time Herald, including several covers stories.
“Handmade Strings: To Make Music Out of a Cat and a Horse’s Tail,” Old Time Herald 13:1 (2012), cover story, PDF
“Traditional Music Collections Online,” Old Time Herald 11:8 (2008)
“Polkas, Polkas, y Mas Polkas: The Tejano Conjunto Festival en San Antonio” Old Time Herald 11:3 (2008) PDF
“Molly O’Day and the Gospel in Old-Time Country Music” Old Time Herald 11:2 (2007)
“Saturday Night at Wayne’s Body Shop” Old Time Herald Spring 2004. PDF
Here is my online guide to the John Donald Robb Field Recordings Collection.
Dan Margolies 