Billboard Guide to Tejano and Regional Mexican Music
With its passionately sungrancherasand accordion-driven conjuntos, its brassybandaand giddy rockgrupos, Mexican and Tejano (Tex-Mex) music has long been one of the least-examined regions of so-called world music. So anyone who's ever bought a bag of Tejano cassettes and wondered what they were getting into will findSan Antonio Express Newsmusic critic Ramiro Burr's encyclopedic overview of it indispensable. Burr begins with a historical synopsis charting Tejano music from its 1930s origins to its 1995 death-of-Selenaapex, followed by a too-short chapter titled "The Cultural Impact of Tejano." The meat of the volume, however, is Burr's 300 or so arduously researched entries on Mexican-American music's most significant acts, instruments, and styles--including such unexpected crossovers asVikki CarrandEydie Gorme. Conspicuous by their absence are the translated lyrics that would have provided non-Spanish-speaking readers with a concrete notion of what all these emotionally charged crooners are actually singing about.--Richard Gehr