Conjunto!

The more in depth we read about conjunto and Texas-Mexican music, the more I have actually come to enjoy the music itself.  I NEVER would have expected myself to say that.  When Professor Kun talked about Esteban Jordan integrating multiple styles into his accordion playing, I immediately went home and listened to his stuff.  I was amazed to discover just how varied he can make a single song (I bought Vuela La Paloma on iTunes that day, it sounds like a distant cousin of the early conjunto stuff: <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/PTrlVb47NrI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> )!  After reading “The Emergence of Conjunto Music” I started to think even more about the subtleties that differentiate styles of conjunto as well as those which characterize conjunto vs. orquesta musical forms.  A consistent theme tends to be that musicians find support in those demographics with which they most comfortably identify; that Narciso Martinez “came from a rural working-class background” (Pena 16) and drew so much support from the lower-class makes sense in this light.  A striking feature however, is, in fact, that the early professional conjunto pioneers and stars did not make a living with their music.  As discussed in class and in the readings, Martinez and others worked jobs such as zoo-keeper and “school janitor” (Pena 17).  Perhaps this is one of the first reasons I became so suddenly attracted to the music (I used to abhor the sound of a polka as much as most classical music that was imposed on me as a kid).  There’s an authenticity in their playing that comes from their ways of life.  Unlike Jenni Rivera who now lives in a huge mansion but still flaunts her gangster days and uses them for her success (which most other people do too), these musicians exhibited genius talent and innovation in the face of never making it big financially.  I’m not going to “hate on” those musicians who make a living (extravagant ones at that) making music because like someone brought up in class a while ago, why wouldn’t we then fault a lawyer for practicing law and making so much money? I actually think musicians deserve the high pay that they generally receive (the BIG stars) because they are able to tap in to the vulnerabilities and deep psychological processes that lead to the question: why do we love music so much?  I just think there’s something noble to the early conjunto players touring and becoming so popular without a tremendous financial reward that other musicians make.  Also interesting was the idea of what makes an instrument ‘stick to’/become identified with a genre like saxophone is to jazz.  That there were stylistic innovations (Pena 17) and integrations of other instruments and the “standard” set of instruments came to be considered an accordion, a contrabass, and a ranchera drum.  Pena mentions on page 17 as well that “commercial dissemination of conjunto music ‘froze’ conjunto into a more or less common form.”  As he later goes on to discuss, this development of a common form parallels the social divergence of working lower classes and middle-class Chicanos, the latter of whom became more Americanized after WWII and associated traditional conjunto music the trace of a socially lower past.  The key for me is that musical forms absolutely changed, as Professor Kun discussed at the beginning of Tuesday’s class.  Tradition changes to be kept alive (Kun 3/29/11), and though people criticize the commercialization for stagnating the musical form, they don’t acknowledge that the form was derived from somewhere else (the German polka!) and the idea that the stagnation spurs reinvention and further innovation.  Esteban Jordan rejuvenated conjunto by incorporating different styles into his accordion playing such as in “Midnight Blues” where you can clearly hear the transition of a Polka into a jazzy sort of style throughout the song: <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/-RrbqCH7ajE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> . A sound reminiscent of the Polka (which was derived from Europe) can be heard a little bit in one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands (“Sophie Roux” by Lady Danville).  The song starts out with the 2 and 4 beats emphasized in a similar manner to that of “Midnight Blues” and the accordion, which evinces a French quality, makes the influence of other musical forms on my favorite music that much more complete to me.  <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/YUxz4fSwyWc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>.  On page 24 Pena mentions the “cultural baggage” of proletarian Mexican workers keeping the Chicano middle class from upward mobility in the US.  Conjunto became associated with the lower class and that was what they were trying to escape.  On page 26 he points out that merely playing a solo accordion was considered lower class, which I find absurd.  I think it’s crazy that a single instruments can be associated with a class-standing.  Even I associate string instruments rather than strictly to the “high-brow”/”serious” (oh, Adorno...) classical realm, to their integral part in almost every pop song (especially ballads).  Finally I looked up the specific artists mentioned in the reading to gain a better idea of the differences between styles and the differences were quite clear to me.  This clip:   (conjunto y Narciso Martinez) is CLEARLY different from (Luis Arcaraz and orquesta).  I would also like to point out that another reason that conjunto music continued to be so dominant in a climate not amenable to its proliferation would be the massive amount of immigration by Mexicans into the United States.  Obviously, in addition to the factors Pena mentions in the closing of his essay, a larger pool of people who would associate with the music is going to increase the popularity of the music.