This column got bumped from the newspaper this week because of lack of space in the Arts & Entertainment section….
Well it’s happened again. Once more, watching late night local access cable has paid off and convinced me that Waco is one of the most diverse musical towns I’ve ever lived in. This column is, in a sense, a sequel to one I wrote back in May and also a continuation of some of the ideas from last week’s piece. Last Saturday night, I watched a couple of musical acts I’d never heard of playing concerts here in Waco under the auspices of the long-running Brazos Nights musical series.
The broadcast alternated between performances by a funk group from New Orleans called Big Sam’s Funky Nation and a tejano group from here in Texas called Los Texmaniacs. On the surface they seemed to have very little in common outside of some exceptional musicianship.
Big Sam’s is fronted by a singer-trombone player (and you don’t see many of those) who used to play in a well-known group called the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Their performance here in Waco looked to be on or close to July 4. It was a rock solid ensemble with good playing, a tight rhythm section, and interesting interplay between the trombone and the trumpet player. It was tremendously entertaining.
Los Texmaniacs, on the other hand, is a Grammy Award-winning five-piece conjunto-tejano band fronted by a very good guitarist who played what I initially thought was just an acoustic 12-string, but what I quickly learned was actually an instrument called a “bajo sexto,” an elemental part of both the conjunto and mariachi sounds. Excluding the rhythm section, the other lead instrument was a button accordion in the hands of a very accomplished player.
Conjunto tejano, while seemingly one style on the surface, is actually a complex blend of styles and influences, a true melting pot in every sense of that phrase. In May, Texas Highways magazine described the genre as “the fusion of German polkas, introduced to Texas by Czech, German, and Polish settlers, and Mexico’s 12-string bajo sexto guitar.” It also has clearly discernible elements of Western swing. Indeed, as I listened, from one of their songs the band was playing they segued into Bob Wills’s classic 1938 tune “San Antonio Rose” so smoothly and unexpectedly they were well into playing it before I even realized it. (Another song flirted aggressively with morphing into Hank Williams’s 1952 hit “Jambalaya.”)
Smithsonian magazine wrote about the band back in 2012, asking its readers to ponder “What does jalapeno-spiced polka music sound like?” But you could just as easily flip that and call it polka-flavored tejano with a splash of Western swing and have every bit as accurate a description. A style of music that emerges from a fusion of German and Mexican influences could scarcely have come together in this sort of way anywhere other than Texas. Thinking about the effortless way this music blends all these styles that one might not immediately consider compatible reminded me of what I wrote last week about bassist Mike Mills composing a work for rock band, solo violin, and orchestra.
Moreover, all this touches on much bigger issues. In a time when our politics seems to thrive on dividing us deeply, it’s really too trite to say that music can overcome our differences. It probably can’t. But on the other hand, when we always start by thinking about how far apart we are, music can certainly be a powerful touchstone of commonality. Yes, all of the arts can do this, but when I see such diverse live performances here in Waco, I tend to believe music can do it best. All it requires is that we give it a chance.
