Música Tejana: The Cultural Economy of Artistic Transformation

Texas-Mexican music, or m sica tejana, is not one single music but several musical and musico-literary genres, ensembles, and their styles, encompassing the corrido, canci n, and what author Manuel Pe a calls the canci n-corrido. M sica tejana also includes two major regional ensembles and their styles--the conjunto and the Texas-Mexican version of the orquesta. A more recent crop of synthesizer-driven ensembles and their styles, known since the mid-eighties as "Tejano," is another representative of m sica tejana.

Despite their diversity, these various ensembles, genres, and styles share two fundamental characteristics: they are all homegrown, and they all speak after their own fashion to fundamental social processes shaping Texas-Mexican society. As Pe a persuasively argues, they represent a transforming cultural economy and its effects on Texas-Mexicans.

Pe a traces the history of m sica tejana from the fandangos and bailes of the nineteenth century through the canci n ranchera and the politically informed corrido to the most recent forms of Tejano music. In the beginning, he argues, musicmaking was a function of "use-value"--its symbolic power linked to the social processes of which it was an organic part. As m sica tejana was swept into the commercial market, it added a second, less culturally grounded dimension--"exchange-value"--whereby it came

under the culturally weakening influence of the commercial market. Since the 1940s, the music has oscillated between the extremes of use- and exchange-value, though it has never lost its power to speak to issues of identity, difference, and social change.

M sica Tejana thus gives not only a detailed overview of m sica tejana but also analyzes the social and economic implications of the music. The breadth, depth, and clarity with which Pe a has treated this subject make this a most useful text for those interested in ethnomusicology, folklore, ethnic studies, and Mexican American culture.