Tag: Norteño

Los mejores de los mejores

It’s long past time that I make a list of my favorite acordeonistas. I mean, it’s really not, but I won’t let that stop me. Obviously, I’m coming at this from a different perspective than most. I didn’t grow up with the music I love. I tuned in one day to the Mexican channels because all the other music playing on the radio in Albuquerque bored me to tears. But when I paused on the Mexican channels, it was like magic to my ears. The accordion. The brass. The vocals.

In the early days, I did a lot of exploring, looking up the bands I’d hear on Radio Lobo (the other Mexican channels never lasted long, but Radio Lobo has remained) and buying the CDs. Seriously. I have a giant collection of Norteño CDs somewhere. Out in a box in the garage, probably. I also did what I used to do with my life: research. It’s hard to believe that approach to the world was appealing to me at one time. I wrote essays in both Spanish and English about the history of Tejano and Norteño. I did presentations on the music for my classes at UNM–Southwest History 120 or Spanish 400 or whatever it was. The response to my obsession from professors and students was general bewilderment. That’s nice Jill; you do you. What a dumb way to be. Never again.

I’ve decided recently that I want to be completely braindead. Like, if I were the Scarecrow in Wizard of Oz, I would sing I would while away the hours, talking to the flowers, singing in the rain, if I didn’t have a brain. That is my fantasy right now. Never analyzing anything. Just writing in fragment sentences and having natural reactions to life. How amazing! I WANT TO BE BRAINLESS! I expressed this to my husband the other day, and he said, Good for you! as if I’d managed a major life breakthrough. At least I get support.

All that nonsense about research and being brainless was really meant to give you an idea of why I have experienced many of the classic accordion players that are not played on the current Mexican channels, such as Tony de la Rosa or Narciso Martinez. My mix of greats has a range from different eras, up through young millennial musicians (there’s actually just one millennial on my list, Eden Muñoz of Calibre Cincuenta [who has recently left that band]; the other Muñoz is a gen-Xer). Speaking of the classics, I’m not ever going to forget seeing Flaco Jimenez play live. Because of that–watching him as an old man dance with his Hohner–he’s on the list. Your list might differ. You might not have a list. You might write a top-ten reasons I don’t make lists list. The top reason on my list of why I don’t write lists is owing to my newfound braindead state.

In no particular order, here are my favorite acordeonistas:

  • Flaco Jimenez
  • Ricky Muñoz
  • Paulino Bernal
  • Ramon Ayala
  • Lupe Tijerina
  • Reynaldo Gonzales
  • Eden Muñoz
  • Celso Piña
  • Jesus “Chuy” Garcia

I’m leaving the last spot empty because I can’t decide. The others fit neatly into my braindead state, as they were no-brainer picks. They are the people I can’t stop listening to for style or innovation or general magic, but I could not decide who else should be on the list. If I decide, I’ll fill in the spot. There were a few Tejanos I was considering… I might need to do a binge listen to old CDs.

A few on the list have passed away–Lupe Tijerina, Celso Piña, Paulino Bernal–may God rest their souls; I’ve also seen quite a few of them live. Others I regularly miss (such as Ricky Muñoz of Intocable) because I’m broke when they come round these parts. Or working. Or hugely pregnant. I actually saw Ramon Ayala live when I was two weeks from giving birth. I was sooooo exhausted, my brain wishing it were dead. I had just finished a dissertation in which I translated Sor Juana’s poetry into English. I hadn’t yet bought my first accordion, so I longed instead to write brainless odes to accordion players in my terrible Spanish, which I did right after graduating. I guess you could say Señor Ayala inspired that.

If I ever start studying again, just shoot me. Or give me a lobotomy and wipe up my drool so it doesn’t spill on my accordion.

I Want to Be Human

Being Spock is overrated. Spock is an alien; he isn’t human. Captain Piccard is human, with all his impetuousness and emotions. The loveable robots who are always trying to be human are attractive for a reason, and it isn’t because they’re being cold and logical. It’s because they try out emotions and human intangibles like love and bravery, even when it doesn’t make sense. Their logic must update to a new kind of sense that uses counterintuitive truth. Aliens can’t do that so much, though.

Our society really lost something when we chose to walk the path of the Enlightenment toward reason as an end to itself. I’d much rather hear “Come, let us laugh together” than “Come let us reason together” any day. In fact, I could fill in “dance” or “sing” in that spot, too. Reasoning together is a dull way to live, and that is in addition to the fact that most people aren’t as smart as they think they are, which makes their reason even more yawn-inducing than it might be if they actually said something that made others think about the world differently. I’ve run across thinkers like that, highly intelligent people who give the contrary answer because they are smart enough to do so — G.K. Chesterton is a prime example. But that’s not altogether reasonable, is it, to always be contrary for the sake of contrariness? Most people don’t have Chesterton’s IQ and can’t pull it off, anyway.

Reasoning with most people is a mind-numbing experience. You know what isn’t? Laughing. Dancing. Singing. Obviously, I would never throw reason entirely out the window. I wish that it were used more by politicians and scientists. True reason. Honest reason. Reasoning that goes beyond the easy answer. I simply don’t want to live with it as a high ideal in my daily life. When it’s idealized, we end up with psychotherapists jabbing icepicks into women’s eyeballs and jiggling around until they’ve cut something in the brain that will make the women stop expressing pesky human emotions that husbands don’t like. I mean, come on, every husband knows that expressing any emotion but sweetness to him when he gets home from work is a definable mental illness. Even if icepicks aren’t the popular cure-all they used to be, drugs that largely don’t work when put to scientific, uh, reason, are the new reasonable approach to address the expression of negative emotions. Such an enlightened way to view the world! Let’s reason together, bro! Okay bro (fist bump), but first I need to cut my wife’s brain or have her swallow a handful of mind-altering pills. She’s upset that the baby’s been up all night and the toddler’s been throwing up and she can’t seem to get the dishes done! How unreasonable! Be with you in a jiff!

It’s funny because pre Aristotle, it was normal for men and women alike to be overcome with emotion, tearing clothes, beating chests, weeping. At least people are described that way in the Bible — David, especially, and it isn’t lost on me that he’s called a man after God’s own heart. He could be quite impetuous, more like Captain Piccard than Spock. Would that I had never been trained to be like Spock. I hate that. I hate the dullness of myself with that mindset. Thankfully, I have enough contrariness that it never went too far.

I suppose this yearning to be fully human is also why I play the accordion. Mexican music has a lot of drama in it. I love that drama to the core of my being. I would exist inside the music, if it were possible. In the early days, I described the sound of many norteño and banda songs as being happy-sad. The accordion sounded happy, but the singing sounded sad — or the reverse. But there is a full spectrum of emotion and sound in the genre; it’s very complex. The focus on accordion and brass support the complexity.

And there it is, I’ve brought it all back to my favorite music. I’m very emotional about the music, you see. Little robots can learn to be human, after all! Thank goodness my little robotic core resisted the alien Spock training. Spock should be deported back to his planet by a bunch of emotional yahoos I like to call humans. The song I’m going to post below is one of my favorites to sing at full volume, really emotional-like. There’s no accordion, but there’s plenty of brass, and it can be played on the accordion. Obviously! ¡Vivan ya!

Sueño en español

(English translation below, as much for the English speakers as the Spanish speakers who can’t understand my bad Spanish.)

Voy a escribir una canción — tal vez más de una! — en español para cantar mientras toco mi acordeón. Será como la de Los Alacranes, el grupo de Alemania (no el grupo mexicano, Alacranes Musical), quien cantaban sus canciones en inglés. Sus letras eran un poco extrañas; que es decir, eran obvias de una manera un hablante nativo no las habría escrito. Creo que podré traer una perspectiva diferente, como “The Scorpions”, aunque no escribiré de perras que tienen hambre de pecados en la turbulencia de un huracán.

Mis canciones serán de pajarillos y amor porque estos son los temas que yo prefiero. Tal vez, escribiré una canción de mariposas, tambien. Las mariposas, los pajarillos, y el amor. Tengo romance en el alma, incluso cuando no existe en la vida actual…y casi nunca existe (ser honesta). Es como una fantasma que se siente pero pocas veces se ve. Y ahora, estoy triste y llena de melancolía por tantos pensamientos.

Hace muchos años yo escribí muchos poemas en español. En esos días, estudiaba la literatura tradicional española, y estaba aprendiendo a reconocer las formas de la poesía tradicional. Por eso, escribí unos romances y sonetos y unas decimas, letrillas, etcetera. Estas formas no se pierden en la niebla de la vida diaria, claramente no. ¡Mentirosa! Por el contrario, se pierden, pero puedo encontrarlas de nuevo. ¡Ahora, es el año del acordeón y de encontrar la poesía y de escribir español muy malo!

I’m going to write a song — perhaps more than one! — in Spanish to sing while I play my accordion. It will be like that of The Scorpions, the group from Germany (not the Mexican group, Alacranes Musical), who sang their songs in English. Their lyrics were a little strange; that is to say, they were obvious in way a native speaker wouldn’t have written them. I believe that I’ll be able to bring a different perspective, like The Scorpions, even though I won’t write about bitches that are hungry for sin in the turbulence of a hurricane.

My songs will be about little birds and love because these are the subjects I prefer. Perhaps, I will write about butterflies, too. Butterflies, little birds, and love. I have romance in my soul, even when it doesn’t exist in real life…and it almost never exists (to be honest). It is like a ghost that is felt but rarely seen. And now, I’m sad and full of melancholy because of such thoughts.

Years ago, I wrote numerous Spanish poems. In those days, I was studying traditional Spanish literature, and I was learning to recognize the traditional Spanish forms of poetry. Because of that, I wrote some decimas, sonetos, letrillas, etcetera. These forms aren’t lost in the fog of daily life, clearly not. Liar! On the contrary, they are lost, but I can find them again. Now, it’s the year of the accordion and of finding poetry and writing really awful Spanish!