The Associated Press State & Local Wire
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March 16, 2000, Thursday, BC cycle
SECTION: State and Regional
LENGTH: 1032 words
HEADLINE: Unique book chronicles Tejano, Mexican regional music

BYLINE: By KELLEY SHANNON
Associated Press Writer

DATELINE: SAN ANTONIO, Texas
   Conjunto music's accordion sounds and Tejano's blues, country and pop influences have made for fine listening and writing for Ramiro Burr for 15 years.

As a music journalist, Burr has chronicled the growing national interest in South Texas artists and Tejano music, including the 1990s rise of singer Selena and her violent death five years ago.

But Burr never found an easy-to-use book providing definitions of the region's Mexican-based music genres or detailing its historical and cultural influences.

So, he wrote one himself.

The result: "The Billboard Guide to Tejano and regional Mexican Music" a book published in the summer of 1999 that's been catching on with musicians, fans and even college professors.

"Since I had dug and dug and dug and dug, and I couldn't find anything, I said, 'I'm going to throw out my own terms,"' Burr said. "I had seen a lot of these bands many, many times. I've reviewed a lot of their new CDs, interviewed a lot of the big hitters."

A native of Laredo, Burr, 44, is a music reporter and critic for the San Antonio Express-News and has a syndicated weekly column on Latin music. He was a contributing writer to "Rough Guide to World Music" and has contributed to "Latina" and "Hispanic Business" magazines.

His new book opens with chapters on the rise of Tejano and the cultural impact of the music.

An "encyclopedia" follows, filled with bios of big names in the business. The book contains a chronology; Burr's Top 10 lists of albums and songs in Tejano, conjunto, norteno, mariachi/ranchera and trio/bolero; and a glossary of musical terms and styles.

Woven into the book are explanations of the economic and historical developments Burr contends contributed to the rise and fall of certain types of Mexican-American music.

Today Latin pop - fueled by Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias and other young stars - leads the Latin music field. But conjunto, Tejano and related music forms endure in the U.S.-Mexico border region.

Though Tejano isn't enjoying the boom it did in the early 1990s, when it was dominated by Selena, Emilio Navaira and La Mafia, it still draws crowds and sells records.

Last week at the Tejano Music Awards in San Antonio, thousands of fans flocked to the Alamodome as Elida y Avante and the Kumbia Kings won four awards each at the 20th annual awards show.

Intocable won album conjunto of the year with its album "Contigo," a CD released six months after Intocable lost two bandmembers in a January 1999 car accident near Monterrey, Mexico.

Burr's book focuses on the evolution of conjunto music and its counterpart in Mexico known as norteno as well as the more urban Tejano.

Conjunto, a Spanish word meaning "combined" or "an ensemble," has its roots in the blending of Mexican and European cultures in South Texas and northern Mexico in the late 1800s. German, Czech and Polish immigrants are believed to have introduced the accordion and polka to the area.

Mexican bands soon combined accordion music with the Mexican bajo sexto, a 12-string bass guitar. By the 1930s, conjunto music took shape with Narciso Martinez of Reynosa, Mexico, as a pioneer.

Grammy winner Flaco Jimenez of San Antonio is one of today's leaders of conjunto and, as Burr writes, is to conjunto what B.B. King is to the blues or George Jones is to traditional country.

Tejano's formation in the 1950s resulted from merging the folksy conjunto with the horn-driven big band sound of the era.

What the book refers to as the "Golden Age" of Tejano peaked in the 1970s, led by Little Joe Y La Familia, a band that tinged its Tejano music with blues and rock.

Though Tejano was simmering and poised for another explosion, it wouldn't happen until mainstream Mexican-American artists Los Lobos and Linda Ronstadt had Spanish-language hits in 1987, prompting widespread appreciation of Latino music, according to Burr.

Los Lobos released "La Bamba" from the movie about Ritchie Valens, and Ronstadt released the album "Canciones de Mi Padre," which won critical acclaim and a Grammy.

"It's just my theory in studying culture that this is what told a lot of Latinos in this country - the Hispanics, especially the Tejanos - 'You know what, you don't have to be embarrassed to say that you're a Mexican-American,"' Burr said.

The success of artists Emilio Navaira - who later turned to country music - and Selena spurred the resurgence of Tejano by the early 1990s.

Selena's danceable music represented a fusion of Mexican cumbia with traditional Tejano, blending with some rhythm and blues and hip-hop, Burr explains. She was starting to cross over into pop music when she was shot to death by the president of her fan club on March 31, 1995, at a motel in Corpus Christi.

Selena was "major-league influential," Burr said, because of her musical talent and because she was a role model for young girls.

Burr contends Tejano sales were starting to level off around the time of her death, but Selena's posthumous popularity propelled the Tejano industry for another two years.

Bob Nirkind, a senior editor at Billboard Books, said he had long been interested in publishing a book on Tejano and regional music and became even more interested after Selena's death. He teamed up with Burr after hearing him speak at the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) music conference in Austin.

Book sales have topped 10,000, and a second order of 3,000 is in the works, Nirkind said.

Martha Fabrique, an assistant professor of music at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, said she began using Burr's book last fall in her class on Mexican-American music in the Southwest. Fabrique considers Burr an authority in the field because of his years of music reporting experience.

"He knows the inner-workings of the recording industry," she said.

The Latin music industry is one that's bound to expand with the growth of the nation's Hispanic population, Burr said.

Once someone injects the right new sound, Burr predicts, there will be another boom for Tejano, an art form he calls "one of the coolest music genres on the American landscape."


On the Net: Ramiro Burr's Web page, www.ramiroburr.com

"Billboard Guide" at www.amazon.com
GRAPHIC: AP Photo