CONJUNTO

I fell in love with Conjunto music 15 years ago. It was at the Conjunto Festival that my old friend Juan Tejeda used to put on at Rosedale Park in San Antonio.

My roots are German-Irish and I’m originally from Montana but I’ve lived in San Antonio a long time. I didn’t know all that much about this compelling, lively, danceable music I was hearing and seeing. But, I love the incredibly rich Mexican cultural tradition and its influence here in South Texas.

Being a visual type, I was first drawn to the instruments: the lead acordion, colorful, lightweight, expressive, with buttons, not keys; a sideman playing this beautiful handmade two-tone guitar called a bajo sexto. The acordion and bajo sexto were accompanied by an electric bass and drums. The music was basic and clean. Polkas, waltzes, schottisches... musical rhythms familiar from my German heritage but also boleros, rancheras, huapangos and cumbias from Mexico...a very interesting mix.

The men who play this music (and let’s face it, there are very few women in the man’s world of Conjunto) are incredible, mostly self-taught musicians playing unbelievable riffs on the acordion and providing rock-solid rhythm with the other instruments. Most of the Conjuntos are composed of working class folks who play for the sheer love of the music and a very real calling to keep this pure, roots music alive for future generations.

Not long after that, I asked Tejeda for a list of 10-12 of the most important Conjunto musicians here in San Antonio and, using his name, I was able to make appointments and take portraits of them. For several years I would show these portraits around. I always got a good response and a lot of interest in who these folks were and what their music was like.

About a year ago it dawned on me that no one had ever done a book of photographs of the Conjunto music scene: the maestros who play the music, the folks who come to dance to it. I knew I needed Joe Nick Patoski and Juan Tejeda to write about the music. They know everything about it, where it comes from, why it’s important. I wanted to show my respect and admiration for the music and honor the people who perform it.

From the beginning Tejeda and I had a time deciding who should be in the book. We drew a pretty quick distinction between Conjunto (a homegrown South Texas roots music) and Norteño (indigenous to northern Mexico). Both kinds of music share certain qualities, but we felt that Conjunto is distinctive enough to warrant its own overview.

There will, of course, be those who differ with our choices for portraits. Everyone I talk to who knows about Conjunto music has his/her own favorites. It’s not a neutral subject. So much of what makes folks like one musician over another is dependent on whether they go to their dances, whether they’re related to them, whether their parents danced to their music way back when.

The portraits in this book are the ones I was able to get. And a lot of them are from here in San Antonio, which is a center for the music. Regrettably, there are some giants of Conjunto I was unable to get (Narcisso Martinez, Tony de la Rosa, Don Santiago Jimenez) who had passed on. But I did manage to photograph several maestros who have since passed on (Valerio Longoria, Fred Zimmerle, Juan Viesca, Daniel Garces).

This book cannot be definitive. There are young musicians out there right now, making their mark on this music who will deserve to be honored in a book of their own someday.

I dedicate this book to the Conjunto musicians, old and young who play for the joy of playing the music their parents and grandparents played or danced to. Not many of them will ever get rich performing this music, but they and we are the richer for it.

JOHN DYER
San Antonio
June 2005