“Tejano and Proud”

This chapter illustrates how the diatonic accordion symbolically embodies the Texan-Mexican community's economic struggle while also distinguishing it as the core of an “authentic” Tejano conjunto sound despite the significant change and fragmentation the music has undergone, particularly during the last fifty years. This Tejano population would also try to distinguish itself musically from the more recent waves of Mexican immigrants who tend to cling on to their own kind of accordion-based music—música norteña. While for the Tejano the accordion symbolizes the cultural memory of a working-class past that allows them to celebrate their role in the making of a prosperous Texan and American society, for Mexican immigrants it is a symbol of regional identity and, at the same time, of their transnational experience.