Tejano Music

Lydia Mendoza, an early star of Mexican American music whose passionate, despairing songs about working-class life on both sides of the border made her a trailblazer for the Tejano genre, has died. She was 91. Mendoza, whose singing career spanned more than 60 years, died Dec. 20 of natural causes in San Antonio, Texas, according to media reports.

Some say that when Selena died, the Tejano genre of music she popularized lost its way. Selena and her band had taken the Texas border sound beyond folksy roots as a Mexicanized polka and planted it firmly in the mix of Caribbean and Latin American pop. With her trademark versatility and her songwriter brother, a campesino sound went urban. And while Tejano had been very male and macho, Selena became its glittering, wholesome diva.

When Tejano superstar Emilio plunged into the mainstream with a country album sung mostly in English last fall, he knew he was going to tread where only a few have gone before. "It's two separate worlds, and now I'm living in both of them," said the 33-year-old musician from his San Antonio home recently. In both worlds he is now known simply as Emilio, having dropped his last name--Navaira--when the album, "Life Is Good," was released in October.

Imagine what might befall the art of Mexican cookery if some blight suddenly eradicated the world supply of hot peppers. Nearly that much spice went out of the Tejano music of Little Joe & La Familia after a button accordion was lost or stolen Thursday during a bus ride through Texas, leaving Lalo Torres without an instrument for the opening set of the band's show Friday at the Galaxy Theatre in Santa Ana.

For all the public attention focused on Tejano music by Selena, both before and after her death last year, one of the patriarchs of this rich amalgam of border styles doesn't see the music being embraced by the masses, either in or out of the Latino community. "Tejano is hardly done anymore," said Little Joe Hernandez, leader of the Grammy-winning Little Joe y la Familia, which plays Friday at the Galaxy Concert Theatre in Santa Ana.

When the Grammy award nominations were announced last week, chances are that the first question to cross many peoples' lips was not "who's up for best Mexican-American performance, vocal or instrumental?" Yet the influence of this music is present in Pam Tillis' border-flavored English-language single, "Mi Vida Loca" (My Crazy Life) among the entries for best female country vocal performance.

Los Lobos brought Mexican American and Mexican music styles to U.S. listeners, but it hasn't been easy for most pop fans to step beyond Los Lobos' 1988 Spanish-language album, "La Pistola y El Corazon." One reason is that almost all the artists working in those styles record for Mexican or Texan labels with limited distribution and visibility. The main exception among U.S. companies is Berkeley-based Arhoolie Records, which has been recording Mexican and tejano musicians since the 1960s.

Millions of U.S. pop fans have been intrigued by the emotional reaction in the Latino community following the shooting death last week of Selena, the 23-year-old \o7 tejano \f7 music superstar. Few of those millions, however, have ever heard Selena's music. The irony of her death is that it occurred just as ambitious plans were under way to introduce Selena's music to a mainstream U.S. audience.

Selena, the queen of Tejano music, was buried in Corpus Christi next to a mesquite sapling, her grave heaped with 8,000 white roses. Selena Quintanilla Perez was shot during a meeting with Yolanda Saldivar, 32, the founder of her fan club who had become her personal assistant. Saldivar was charged with her murder. About 600 relatives, friends and music industry officials attended the funeral.

Latin music sensation Selena, a 23-year-old Grammy winner who delighted audiences with her unpretentious blend of bouncy pop and tender ballads, died Friday afternoon after being shot twice at a Days Inn hotel here, allegedly by the former president of her fan club. In a bizarre standoff with police, the woman suspected of shooting Selena locked herself inside a red pickup truck in the hotel parking lot for more than nine hours, threatening to commit suicide.