Folk music has always been the subject of university research. As folklore studies, ethnology or cultural anthropology, people from academia around the world analyze how songs are passed down through generations and spread beyond their region. Professor Kathleen Hudson from Schreiner University in Kerrville is the leading expert on US music traditions in Texas.
Her new book is the third in a series with Oral History. Musicology and music criticism often focus on a selection of music makers distorted by commercial mechanisms. This is to the detriment of marginalized groups, and larger contexts remain hidden behind the PR. Hudson’s interviews close this gap and give a voice to over thirty musicians from the Mexican-Texan border – songwriters, singers, musicians, bandleaders.
They include established stars such as Flaco Jiménez, Tish Hinojosa and Rosie Flores, as well as newcomers like Josh Baca and Lesly Reynaga. They all reflect on life on the border, their role as mostly Mexican-born Americans who often grew up speaking Spanish, and sort out technical terms such as TexMex, Tejano, Hispanic, Mariachi, Corrido, Conjunto and Norteño.
With witty anecdotes and precise interventions, Hudson motivates her counterparts to gain deep, personal insights into life and work. She is interested in regional roots, family influences and the professional network in the creative process. How is it that this sometimes danceable, sometimes touching amalgam of German, Czech and Spanish heritage on the one hand and modern US music between adult pop, blues, jazz, country and rock on the other could be created right here in the north of the Rio Grande? What makes this variety of post-migrant world music so attractive to an audience in Europe or China?
To pick up on the title, these open-hearted tales from the crème de la crème of Mexican-Texan folk music are now unmissable. As with its predecessors Telling Stories, Writing Songs: An Album of Texas Songwriters (2001) and Women in Texas Music: Stories and Songs (2013), anyone interested in the scene will receive an excellent, well-founded standard work that is well worth reading.
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A Haven For Songs 