by Alex Avila At first, Hector Gal�n couldn’t get anyone to hear the music in Tejano. When the
filmmaker tried to secure funding for a film about Tejano music,
he met with resistance from mainstream funding sources. Although the
award-winning documentarian has had success with such films as Los
Mineros, The Hunt for Pancho Villa, and Vaquero: The
Forgotten Cowboy, plus a slew of mainstream PBS pieces that weren’t Latino
works, funders – even many who supported his previous projects – couldn’t quite
see his vision.
“It was one of those projects that was real hard to describe,” says
Gal�n. “It was a real hard `fund-raising’ project. People would ask,
`What is it about?’ And you tell them it’s about music. `Well, what kind of
music?’ And you start to describe Tejano music, which already is difficult. A
lot of the funding sources, the more national funding sources, only were
interested in folk traditions and that type of music.”
Of course, that was before the death of Selena, an event which, beyond the
obvious tragedy, proved to many unfamiliar with Tejano music that it has an
enormous audience and a rich history. Prior to that moment when Tejano’s power
was proven to the world, the responses to Gal�n’s idea for a documentary
about the form were so cool that he might have been discouraged from making the
film. But he persisted.
“The way I looked at it, I was going to do the project anyway, even if I
hadn’t gotten any funding,” insists the director. “Because it was a part of me.
I mean, I’ve lived all over the place. I’ve traveled. I lived in Boston for a
couple of years (working for the flagship PBS station there). And everywhere I
went, I took my music because it reminded me of Texas. It reminded me of home.
I think that’s true with music from any culture. In Vietnam, there were
soldiers there listening to Little Joe y la Familia, because it reminded them
of home. That’s why I called the film Songs of the Homeland.”
The way Gal�n ultimately kick-started Songs of the Homeland was
with some funding he had obtained for a separate but similar project.
“Originally,” Gal�n says, “we had received a grant from the National
Latino Communications Council (NLCC) for a project called The Lark of the
Border. It was supposed to be a documentary that focused on Lydia Mendoza,”
a native of Houston who was the first Mexican-American to reach international
star status in the 1930s and Forties. “That grant was for $20,000 and became
the seed money for a much larger project that I envisioned on the history of
Tejano music,” he adds.
Gal�n wanted to present a historical overview of a unique musical form
that evolved from the dual status of Mexican-Americanism. Like jazz, which has
its roots in African, Creole, and Caribbean traditions, Tejano is a uniquely
American form of music that grew from the sounds of diverse cultures. Tejano
traces its influences not only from Mexico and Spain, but also the German,
Polish, and Czech communities that settled near the native Tejano communities
in Texas. “Texas has been amazing in creating an original American music,” says
Gal�n. “That’s what Tejano is – it is an original American music. It
borrows a lot from the European, Mexican/Spanish traditions. But what has
evolved is uniquely American.”
Songs of the Homeland opens with turn-of-the-century photographs of
Mexican-American agricultural workers. Caught between Mexico and the U.S.,
these people called themselves Tejanos, a Spanish term for Texan. These images
are contrasted with a modern Tejano nightclub in San Antonio with a performance
by La Tropa F, one of the hottest Tejano acts today (appearing at the Fiestas
Patrias celebration at Fiesta Gardens in Austin Friday, September 15). The
documentary, narrated by Freddy Fender, points out that while the club may
appear Mexican, with Latino dancers and Spanish lyrics, it is truly American,
with American music played to an American audience.
“In Texas, you have this incredible cultural mix. It’s not a `melting pot.’
It’s a universe of exchange,” explains Pat Jasper, director of Texas Folklife
Resources, in the documentary. “It’s a place where lots of different
communities, even if they weren’t speaking to each other, their musical
traditions and their artistic traditions were.”
In addition to Jasper, the documentary features interviews with major
personalities who influenced the development of the music. One of the first
interviewees is Lydia Mendoza, now in her eighties. Once called “la
Cancionera de los Pobres” (songstress of the poor), Mendoza describes how
her family survived by taking the music to the people, following what was known
as “the migrant trail,” the route that farm laborers, predominately Tejanos,
followed looking for work picking cotton.
Mendoza is an example of the Mexican musical influence of the Tejano populace
– most of Mendoza’s songs were Mexican ballads sung in Spanish. In the story of
Narciso Mart�nez and Santiago Jim�nez, Sr., the film reveals how
European influences shaped Tejano music. Mart�nez paired the accordion,
brought to Texas by European immigrants, with the bajo sexto, a 12-string
guitar brought to Mexico from Spain. This pairing was the basis for the term
“conjunto,” meaning conjoining. “My grandfather used to go to the dances around
the San Antonio area in New Braunfels and Seguin,” says popular conjunto artist
Flaco Jim�nez in the film. “And he used to listen to the oom-pah music that was playing around at that time. So he managed to buy an accordion
and he copied the music of those guys, of the German and the Polish guys from
Europe. So he managed to play like them.”
Songs of the Homeland identifies many (albeit not all) of the music’s
pioneers and follows its evolution as it splinters into two distinct schools of
sound: Tejano and conjunto. “What I wanted to do was to include this debate
between commercial Tejano music and the more traditional, pure conjunto music,”
said Gal�n. “I wanted to make that clear.” The documentary explores how
societal changes such as World War II, the urbanization of the 1950s, and rock
& roll’s emergence all played parts in the development of these separate
schools. By the Fifties, a growing middle class was drawn toward a more
sophisticated orchestra sound and the accordion, which had reached a zenith in
popularity in the late Forties, was frowned upon as too backward, too rural,
too “Mexican.” Orchestras were in, and the hot performers included Beto Villa
and Isidro Lopez. Using Tex-Mex lyrics as opposed to “elegant Spanish and
flowery phrases,” this sound came to be known as Tejano music. Accordion-based
conjunto was relegated to the underground along the migrant trail where a loyal
base kept it alive and largely unchanged.
“I use the accordion as a metaphor in the film,” explains Gal�n.” In
the beginning, all Tejano music was accordion-based. By the 1950s to the 1970s,
the accordion was out. Nobody wanted to be associated with the accordion.
Today, the accordion has re-emerged. It’s like what Pat Jasper said in the
film. You know, people want to be able to touch their roots and the accordion
is a way to do that.”
The documentary has proven enormously popular in area screenings, drawing
standing ovations at several Latino film and video festivals. At the Cinesol in
South Padre Island, the film was given the 1994 Sol Award for excellence in
documenting the history and culture of South Texas. At the CineFestival in San
Antonio, Songs of the Homeland won the “Special Jury” category in that
festival’s Premio Mezquite Awards.
Gal�n has been so pleased with the response that he plans to follow
Songs of the Homeland with another documentary covering strictly
conjunto music. For this project, funding doesn’t appear to be a problem.
Private investors and Southwestern Bell have already promised him the funding
necessary to produce the film.
“I’ve been in the business for awhile now,” reflects the filmmaker, “and I
think I have the tools and the knowledge to bring some of these stories to the
national psyche. And that was my goal. I’ve done that in the past with some
other shows and I will continue to do that.” n
Songs of the Homeland will be broadcast on KLRU, channel 18, cable 9, on
Sep. 20, Wed,
at 9pm.
This article appears in September 15 • 1995 and September 15 • 1995 (Cover).