Locating Afromestizaje in Esteban Jordan`s Texas Conjunto

Squeezebox Poetics: Locating Afromestizaje in Esteban Jordan’s
Texas Conjunto Performance
Marco Cervantes
American Quarterly, Volume 65, Number 4, December 2013, pp. 853-876
(Article)
Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI: 10.1353/aq.2013.0059
For additional information about this article
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/aq/summary/v065/65.4.cervantes.html
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Locating Afromestizaje in Esteban Jordan’s Texas Conjunto Performance | 853
Squeezebox Poetics: Locating
Afromestizaje in Esteban Jordan’s Texas
Conjunto Performance
Marco Cervantes
He throws such sounds
like chili jazz
with a new kind of class
con el acordión
which he explodes
into polkitas traviesas
or guitared blues
como en Tejas
—Nephtali De Leon, “Squeeze Box Man,”
read at Esteban Jordan’s funeral, San Martin de
Porres Church, San Antonio, TX, August 19, 2010.
Live at Saluté: Esteban Jordan’s Conjunto Jazz and the Salience of
Afromestiza/o Performance
O
ur Lady of Guadalupe stands on an altar in the center of the pastel
orange––colored back room of Saluté, staring at the ground as Archie Bell and the Drells’ classic soul tune “Tighten Up” plays on the
scratchy house sound system. Tejano Conjunto Festival posters with pictures
of legends such as Narciso Martínez, Flaco Jiménez, and Mingo Saldívar adorn
the walls, each with an accordion accompaniment. To the left of the stage sits
a row of patrons, enjoying their prized front-row seats. On the right an exit
leads to the outside patio area surrounded by chicken wire to keep patrons
from bum-rushing the club where the conjunto legend and accordion virtuoso
Esteban Jordan has played every Friday night since the late 1980s.1 Onstage
Jordan wears black slacks, a sequined purple shirt, heeled disco boots, and his
signature eye patch. He pulls his red Hohner “Steve Jordan Rockordion” from a
brown leather case, straps the instrument around his back, and paces back and
forth, warming up his fingers with jazz scales on the buttons. His raspy voice
©2013 The American Studies Association
854 | American Quarterly
counts off the first four beats to “Midnight Blues” as his band, Rio Jordan,
composed of his three sons, Steve Jr., Ricardo, and Steve III, begins playing
a bebop instrumental. The crowd applauds, whistles, and throws gritos (loud
yells) of approval, and Jordan leans back and releases a barrage of blues and jazz
licks. After eight measures of instrumental musicianship, the band switches the
beat midmeasure to polka. For the remainder of the evening Jordan navigates
back and forth from polka to jazz while adding other styles and fusing musical
forms in a ritual that has defined his hybrid aesthetics.
Esteban Jordan’s early history informs his later career as a musician. He was
born in Elsa, Texas, and grew up in a family of migrant workers who toiled
along the Rio Grande Valley. Jordan learned guitar at age seven and picked
up the accordion after observing Valerio Longoria’s performances along the
migrant circuit.2 On accordion, Jordan grew skilled at playing Texas conjunto
music while also studying African American musical forms popularized in the
1940s and 1950s, namely, jazz, soul, and later funk. Throughout his career
he fused these musical forms to create his own, distinct conjunto sound. After
several releases in the 1960s, Jordan’s frustration with the declining popularity
of the accordion compelled him to play jazz guitar, and he eventually performed
alongside established musicians in New York and California, including the
Afro-Cuban jazz leader Willie Bobo. In the early 1970s Jordan’s style reflected
his nights “playing jazz and R&B venues throughout the South.”3 Jordan also
traveled to Denver where he played in “Five Points,” an African American
neighborhood with a rich musical legacy, where he was dubbed “Little T-Bone,”
after the black Texas guitar legend T-Bone Walker.4 In the late 1970s Jordan
returned to Texas and again played Texas conjunto music and employed pentatonic scales that gave rancheras and polkas a soulful edge.5 Until his death in
2010, Jordan covered an array of blues, jazz, and soul classics, reworking the
musical pieces to fit a Texas conjunto format. His fusion of African American
and Mexican American musical forms presents a reminder of the continuous
merging of black and Chicana/o culture in Texas and how shared musical expressions offer the potential of expanding black and Chicana/o imaginaries. To
demonstrate this fusion, Jordan incorporates African American musical forms
into the genre of Texas conjunto, a rural, traditional Texas Mexican music,
which relies heavily on ranchera and polka arrangements.
Today there remains a strict designation between conjunto and other musical
forms created by Texas Mexicans. In local Tejano music stores like Del Bravo
Records and Janie’s Records in San Antonio, for example, CDs are separated
according to genre, and conjunto has its own section, where patrons can find
Jordan’s albums alongside music by Jiménez, Saldívar, and Tony De La Rosa.
Locating Afromestizaje in Esteban Jordan’s Texas Conjunto Performance | 855
Texas conjunto stands as a subcategory of Tejano music with specific identifiers.
According to the conjunto scholar and musician Juan Tejeda, Texas conjunto “has
come to denote a specific form of music that combines German, Mexican, Latin
American, and US influences. The lead instrument in the traditional four-piece
conjunto is the button accordion. The other instruments are the bajo sexto (a
twelve string bass-rhythm guitar), bass guitar, and drums.”6 Though conjunto
continues to undergo transitions in instrumentation and musical style, the accordion and bajo sexto remain standard elements of a true conjunto ensemble.
Furthermore, conjunto dance steps align with polka, ranchera, and at times
cumbia, and Texas conjunto musicians tend to play songs within these genres.
Jordan’s playing, however, presents a unique form of Texas conjunto. The
San Antonio Express News journalist Hector Saldaña describes Jordan as
a “defiant, genre-defying accordionist credited with introducing jazz, pop,
blues and Chicano rock into conjunto music.”7 The Washington Post’s Terence
McArdle acknowledges Jordan’s unique position in Texas conjunto, writing
that he “adapted jazz standards such as ‘Harlem Nocturne’ and ‘Midnight
Sun,’ and uptown rhythm ’n’ blues to a genre best known for polkas, waltzes
and boleros.”8 Joel Guzman, in an interview with NPR, describes Jordan’s use
of jazz notation on the accordion: “He’s [Jordan’s] playing flat 5s and raised
11ths and just rhythmically so deep.”9 Also, because Jordan runs sound effects
through jazz and blues accordion, he has been called the “Jimi Hendrix of the
Accordion.”10 Elijah Wald notes that “he was the first person to start playing
around with things like phase shifters and pedals on accordion.”11 Jordan’s
layering of blues, jazz, and soul on top of musical effects transcends conjunto
from its strictly Texas Mexican rural music roots. In an interview, Jiménez
illustrates this differentiation:
Steve [Jordan] plays a lot of jazz and rock’n’roll, which I can do, but his style is more
progressive and precise because he knows where he’s going when I am more spontaneous.
And I admire his sabiduria [knowledge/wisdom]. The difference between him and me in
spite of my knowledge of jazz and rock and roll is that I am more rancheron (rural) and he
is more urban.12
Jiménez’s distinction between rancheron and urban styles demonstrates precisely
how Jordan differs from the majority of Texas conjunto accordion players. His
style presents more African American musical forms than his Texas conjunto
contemporaries. With the accordion, Jordan fuses Texas conjunto polkas and
rancheras with blues, jazz, soul, and funk, which culminates in a Texas conjunto
afromestizo/a performance.
856 | American Quarterly
I employ the term afromestizaje to reference the identity and cultural production of African American and Chicana/o subjects in shared spaces and in
dialogue. Afromestizaje presents an approach to examining fusions between
African American and Mexican American cultural expressions in social spaces
and employs both concepts of mestizaje and the African diaspora. Adding the
prefix Afro before mestiza/o centers black culture and identity in theories of
mestizaje as well as allows a methodology to read blackness within works by
Chicana/o artists. I utilize afromestizaje similarly to Juan Flores’s use of creole
in discussing Caribbean Latina/os’ relationships with the African diaspora.13
According to Flores, “The word ‘creole’ or ‘creolized’ often surfaced in discussions of this cultural world of the new diasporas. Interestingly, it is a word, and
a process, traditionally used to refer to the Caribbean region and its syncretistic
cultural formation out of the mix of African, European, indigenous, and other
civilizational lineages.”14 Thus, for addressing the Chicana/o experience in
the Southwest, afromestizaje underscores the nuanced and complex fusions of
culture among African Americans and Chicana/os in the United States.
Locating Afromestizaje: Transculturation and the African Diaspora in
Aztlán
My analysis of how afromestizaje functions in the context of Jordan’s performance is linked to the concept of transculturation. To describe the cultural
encounters involved in Cuba’s history, Fernando Ortiz coined transculturation
as a response to the term acculturation, which was used by US anthropologists
in the 1930s. According to Ortiz, transculturation “does not consist merely in
acquiring another culture” but “involves the loss or uprooting of a previous
culture.”15 According to theories of transculturation, in a colonial space the
colonizer cannot fully dominate the culture of the colonized, but rather both
cultures are affected as a result of contact. Jordan’s fusing of soul, blues, and
jazz with German polkas and Mexican rancheras and corridos of Texas conjunto
displays the fungibility of borders and engages in a multitude of genres through
transculturation.
Though Ortiz’s definition of transculturation provides a useful starting point
to theorize Jordan’s aesthetics, the term itself subscribes to a colonizer–colonized relationship, between a dominant culture and a subordinated culture. A
closer look at the colonial implications of Jordan’s fusions of African American
and Chicana/o culture provides a way to examine Afro-Latina/o culture in
the United States, whereby afromestizaje engages three terms, the three roots
of the Mexican American experience. While the concept of transculturation
Locating Afromestizaje in Esteban Jordan’s Texas Conjunto Performance | 857
has proliferated in recent literature, by and large Chicana/o scholars instead
employ the term mestizaje to describe the cultural occurrences involved in the
racial, ethnic, and cultural mixtures of Chicana/o culture and identity. Within
Chicana/o studies, scholars use the term mestizaje to address colonization and
marginalization of indigenous and African peoples; however, the term’s history, as well as its varied definitions, has been the source of important critique
and contestation.
During the conquest of the Americas, the Spanish Empire applied the term
mestizaje to people of mixed race in newly colonized territories. Consequently,
the concept of mestizaje worked to whiten indigenous populations and created a
racial hierarchy that privileged European mixture with indigenous populations.
Later, the Mexican government used the concept of mestizaje after the war for
Mexican Independence to instill Mexican nationalism. José Vasconcelos’s text
La raza cósmica (1925), embedded in the racist discourse of the time, proposed
the racial mixture of Mexicans as a movement toward a superior race. According to Vasconcelos’s theory of La raza cósmica, “The lower types of the species
will be absorbed by the superior type. In this manner, for example, the Black
could be redeemed, and step by step, by voluntary extinction the uglier stocks
will give way to the more handsome.”16 Because of such discourse, scholars
such as María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, Néstor García Canclini, and Taunya
Lovell Banks have interrogated, questioned, and challenged the use of mestizaje
as a theoretical tool in both Chicana/o and Latina/o contexts. In reference
to Chicana/o scholars’ use of the term, Saldaña-Portillo writes that mestizaje
“recuperates the Indian as an ancestral past rather than recognizing contemporary Indians as cohabitants not only of this continent abstractly conceived,
but of the neighborhoods and streets of hundreds of US cities and towns.”17
In her discussion on the absence of blackness in Latina/o scholars’ theories of
mestizaje, Banks indicates how “the subordination of African slaves and their
descendents was a component of Spanish colonialism and nationalism that
must be acknowledged, but is often lost in the uncritical celebration of Latina/o
mestizaje.”18 García Canclini explains how the term mestizaje problematically
excludes a number of groups and therefore is not useful in discussing “diverse
intercultural mixtures.”19 The problems attached to mestizaje, according to
these scholars, include the removal of indigenous subjectivity and obstruction
of African roots in the imaginary of Latin America. While these arguments
call for more critical examinations of mestizaje, they do not call for purging
the term to theorize culture and identity.
In fact, as a term steeped in colonial history, mestizaje carries a problematic
legacy; therefore, scholars take up the term with all its ambiguities, making it
858 | American Quarterly
a useful tool to recognize the effects of colonization on Mexican and Mexican
American subjects. The obfuscation of indigenous heterogeneity, as well as of
African roots, remains a painful truism of Chicana/o cultural history. Because
of the tragic obstruction of these histories, scholars continue to use mestizaje
to understand and reflect on problems, confusion, and liberation attributed to
conquest and colonization. According to Suzanne Bost, mestizaje “highlights
the mixture of identities in the Americas and the friction that occurs between
them.”20 Rafael Pérez-Torres describes how the term “is tied to a colonial history of racial hierarchy whose power relations already constrain and guide the
body.”21 In her work on queering mestizaje, Alicia Arrizón demonstrates how
the term “performs a link to local and translocal identities through contradictions, cultural negotiations, and resistance.”22 Deborah Pacini Hernandez
explains that while mestizaje is embedded in a racist discourse, the term also
recognizes “the extent to which the experiences of Latinos living in the United
States have been shaped by racial, ethnic, and cultural mixture.”23 Therefore,
as these scholars reveal, its troubled past has in fact made mestizaje a useful
concept in theorizing the colonial legacy of oppression and violence in the
history of Chicana/os in the United States. Furthermore, Chicana feminists,
in particular, continue to redefine and employ mestizaje as a methodology to
understand the variants and multidimensions of Chicana feminist identity.24
Thus mestizaje’s troubled history reminds us of the devastating removal of
indigenous subjectivity and African history from discourses on Latinidad. To
further explore these colonial histories, an African diasporic lens provides a
useful route to reintroduce and explore blackness within theories of mestizaje.
The African diaspora refers to the movement of Africans throughout the
world. Patrick Manning explains how “people of sub-Saharan Africa have
migrated, in wave after wave, to other regions of the world.”25 According to
Manning, this movement “involved settlement of the Old World tropics . . .
followed by occupation of Eurasia, Oceania, and the Americas.”26 The term
African diaspora can be traced to scholars George Shepperson and Joseph E.
Harris, who employed the concept during an international conference on
African history in 1965.27 Diaspora studies increased in popularity through
the latter half of the twentieth century with the rise of countries gaining independence in Africa and the Caribbean. According to Manning, “By the 1990s,
consciousness of the African diaspora had become wide enough that the term
African Diaspora began to be used much more extensively, in academic circles
and in black communities.”28 The African diaspora has since become a central
concept to analyze, debate, and celebrate transnational movement from Africa
Locating Afromestizaje in Esteban Jordan’s Texas Conjunto Performance | 859
throughout the world, and its fluid qualities allow scholars to employ the term
in various contexts.
Because of the fluid nature of the term diaspora, its meanings and uses
continually shift. James Clifford argues that “diasporic cultural forms can
never, in practice, be exclusively nationalist. They are deployed in transnational
networks built from multiple attachments, and they encode practices of accommodation with, as well as resistance to, host countries and their norms.”29
Because diasporic subjects are heterogeneous, establishing a fixed categorization
of African subjects is impossible; however, the use of the concept has become
an effective method to examine black colonial struggles and resistance movements worldwide.
Studies in the African diaspora often pronounce the term’s oppositional
position. Linking the concepts mestizaje and African diaspora allows for the
expansion of black and Latina/o imaginaries toward an empowering AfroLatinidad consciousness. Tiffany Ruby Patterson and Robin D. G. Kelley
define the African diaspora as a movement of oppressed people subjected to
such conditions as “forced labor, racial oppression, colonial conditions, and
capitalist exploitation.”30 Stuart Hall argues how these connections sparked
counterhegemonic movements by “imposing an imaginary coherence on
the experience of dispersal and fragmentation.”31 Agustin Laó-Montes, who
argues that diaspora studies is key to forming black and Latina/o alliances,
contextualizes the African diaspora as a product of the “subalternization of
Afro-diasporic peoples” that provides “historical agency of resistance and selfaffirmation.”32 My use of the concept African diaspora derives from scholars’
politicization of the term and how it has helped blur the line between black
and Latina/o imaginaries. Therefore, applying African diasporic readings to
Chicana/o cultural production allows for a broader and more thorough view
of Chicana/o resistance to standing hegemonies.
Within the context of this essay I utilize afromestizaje as a placeholder, in
between terms, still being negotiated and wrestled with. The fluidity of both
African diaspora and mestizaje cultural theories offers lenses through which to
examine cultural fusion from the Americas to Africa, Africa to the Americas,
as well as to explore terms such as black, Latina/o, African American, Mexican
American, and Chicana/o. Thus Jordan’s fusion of mestizo and African diasporic
imaginaries exists on the borderlands, a route to theorize the fusion of marginalized black and brown subjects in the history of Texas’s colonial figuration.
As such, Jordan’s blurring of ranchera with African American musical forms
demonstrates cross-cultural exchange among African American and Chicana/o
cultural expression. Through the genre of conjunto, one of the most traditional
860 | American Quarterly
and standardized Texas Mexican musical forms, Jordan engages in afromestizo
performance and displays blackness as a component of Texas Mexican culture.
Conjunto Rancheras, Blues, Soul, and Jazz: Mapping Jordan’s
Afromestiza/o Musical Fusions
Though African American musical forms have shaped most genres known as
American or US music, Chicana/o performance of African American music
reveals a specific form of transculturation. African Americans and Chicana/
os have distinct histories of marginalization in the United States that are represented in musical performances and cross-cultural exchange. Musical forms
such as blues, jazz, soul, funk, orquesta, and conjunto have come to represent
class and community among African Americans and Chicana/os. Jordan’s
music specifically engages the ranchera polka styles of conjunto with African
American genres such as blues, jazz, and soul. Using an afromestiza/o lens to
view Jordan’s performance, we can analyze how black musical forms weave
into Texas Mexican conjunto music, which has been specifically marketed as a
rural, working-class musical genre consisting of Mexican rancheras and German polkas.
An understanding of the marketing of music through race is key to recognizing the importance of Jordan’s aesthetics. The concept of race music
aided in the development of US popular music’s distinction between “black,”
“white,” and “ethnic music.” Hernandez explains how a 1920 Mammie Smith
recording “proved that black musicians singing black vernacular music would
sell well in the black community and beyond.”33 After realizing how music
could be marketed by race, industry executives began labeling categories as
hillbilly, popular, and ethnic to distinguish between white music, black music,
and non-English music. Yet, as Hernandez points out, “audiences listening
to the radio and buying records often ignored these divisions and consumed
whatever appealed to them.”34 Similarly, musicians often crossed boundaries
in performances, complicating distinct race-based musical categorization. In
his examination of Hispanic music’s influence on US blues, Peter Narváez explains how Martínez “recorded blues for Victor and Bluebird in the 1930s.”35
Likewise, David Evans describes how the blues musician Johnny Temple “could
usually be heard playing polkas and Italian music for underworld kingpins.”36
While these crossings most certainly occurred, the music industry continued
to impose sharp racial and ethnic categories in distributing and promoting
recorded music, and this in turn set the stage for the marketing of music created distinctly by African Americans and Chicana/os.
Locating Afromestizaje in Esteban Jordan’s Texas Conjunto Performance | 861
In the United States, early black music in the form of spirituals transformed into what William C. Banfield describes as a “larger tradition that
included ragtime, gospel, swing, bebop, rhythm and blues, rock and roll,
free jazz, Afro-Caribbean artistry, reggae, soul, and hip hop.”37 Scholars and
artists demonstrate how these musical forms reflect the social climate of the
times and often use music as a way to theorize African American culture and
identity. For example, in 1956 Langston Hughes wrote about “jazz as communication.”38 Amiri Baraka describes how the blues presents a timeline that
follows black slavery to citizenship and marks the “beginning of the Negro’s
conscious appearance on the American scene.”39 Houston A. Baker Jr. uses the
theory of “blues as a matrix” to examine African American literary expression.40
Iain Anderson discusses how Black Arts writers such Baraka, A. B. Spellman,
Larry Neal, and Askia M. Touré “analyzed free improvisation in album liner
notes and articles in the jazz and African American press,” while “many of the
younger musicians participated actively in literary endeavors.”41 Even more,
the emergence of soul music provided the soundtrack for the civil rights movement. Nelson George asserts that soul represented the “We Shall Overcome”
era of the 1960s and “was about faith in the human capacity for change and
a palpable optimism about the future.”42 George includes artists such as Sam
Cooke, Aretha Franklin, and James Brown as representatives of the “soul” era,
which would shape US culture as a whole. Later, funk and hip-hop continued
to reflect social conditions among black Americans.
Similarly, genres among Texas Mexicans echoed the social struggles of the
times. Some of the earliest forms of music played by Texas Mexicans came in
the form of corridos and rancheras. In the 1920s and 1930s, record labels and
promoters implemented the commercialization of Texas Mexican music, and
orquesta and conjunto became two of the most popular musical forms. The Texas
conjunto music scholar Manuel Peña associates orquesta “with an upwardly
mobile segment of Texas Mexican society.”43 Orquesta ensembles performed
in ballroom settings and included brass, woodwind, and string instruments.
According to Peña, early orquestas were “caught up in the excitement of the
swing band era” and included songs that incorporated jazz and blues into
their compositions, for example, Beto Villa’s “Pachuca Blues” and “Southern
Select.”44 Different from orquesta, Peña describes conjunto as “historically the
music of la gente pobre [people of lower class].”45 Conjunto symbolizes the rural, working-class Mexican roots of Tejano culture. A broader Texas Mexican
community often associated Texas conjunto with polkas and rancheras played in
cantinas. As time passed, however, these genres would be further complicated
as historical events affected identity politics.
862 | American Quarterly
When Jordan began recording music in the late 1950s–1960s, hybridity
between African American and Chicana/o musicians grew more transparent
in Texas. While the popularity of conjunto was peaking, a growing number of
Texas Mexicans also gravitated toward US English-language music, specifically
the era’s doo-wop and R&B songs. In San Antonio, Chicano R&B groups such
as the Royal Jesters, Spider and the Playboys, Rudy T. and the Reno Bops, and
Sunny and the Sunliners gained popularity. Ruben Molina dubs the music of
this era, which has “its roots in the Chicano’s infatuation with American urban
black music,” Chicano Soul.46 According to Molina, “Young aspiring musicians and music lovers were seduced by the allure of the 1950s era jazz, blues,
jumbo blues, rock n roll, and Latin jazz. What became Chicano Soul music, in
a sense, set Chicanos free from what would be called the cultural norm.”47 As
Chicana/os continued to contribute to the cultural production of the United
States, they also disrupted “race record” restrictions set in earlier decades. By
masking their names and Mexican identity, these musical acts prefigured later
fusions of black and brown musical expression. Jordan left Texas and returned
when these soul and R&B sounds fell out of fashion and Chicana/os grew more
engaged in mixing orquesta and conjunto styles with blues, jazz, soul, and funk.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the impact of the civil rights movement,
the Black Power movement, the Chicano movement, and the Vietnam War
introduced a discourse that encouraged organic cultural nationalist musical
forms. According to José R. Reyna, Chicana/o musicians began to “raise the
consciousness of Chicanos during the civil rights movement of the late 1960s
and the 1970s.”48 Bands such as War, El Chicano, Tierra, Santana, Malo, and
Tower of Power performed variants of Afro-Latina/o music across the nation.
This wave of political and artistic consciousness altered music in Texas, where
the movimiento greatly affected politicized Chicana/os. Texas Mexican bands
of this era took on more politicized names and fused conjunto and orquesta
sequences with popularized African American musical contours in both Spanish
and English. Little Joe y La Familia, Latin Breed, Roberto Pulido y Los Clásicos,
and Tortilla Factory, for example, fused traditional Mexican and Tejano forms
like orquesta and conjunto with African American forms such as jazz, funk, and
blues. These sounds further developed into what is now known as Tejano, yet
the more traditional conjunto retained its popularity among Texas Mexicans.
Coinciding with the growth of Chicano nationalism in the late 1960s
and early 1970s, Texas conjunto represented Texas working-class rural roots.
Guadalupe San Miguel Jr. notes, “Chicano activists embraced it [conjunto]
as the best known and most clear expression of Chicano culture.”49 Part of
conjunto’s popularity in the Chicano movement was the music’s emphasis on
Locating Afromestizaje in Esteban Jordan’s Texas Conjunto Performance | 863
rancheras, which resonated with the farmworkers’ movements. For Yolanda
Broyles-González, “The canción ranchera is a part of the contested space between two overlapping cultural geographies of a migratory people with long
roots.”50 Rooted in ranchera aesthetics, Texas conjunto provides a soundtrack to
many migrant families living within the US and Texas border. As Peña notes,
conjunto musicians have always been tied to migrant farmworkers “both socioculturally and economically.”51 In this setting, Texas conjunto established a
platform where Chicana/os could celebrate pride in Chicana/o roots as well as
communicate issues about farmworker struggles. Therefore, activists from this
era celebrated Jordan as a hero of the movimiento even while his musicianship
expanded notions of Texas conjunto.
Jordan, in his performance of Texas conjunto, transcends the standardized
form to include such genres as jazz, blues, soul, and funk. Though Jordan’s
style could be read as simply a mix of conjunto music and popular American
music, his performance of African American music in spaces reserved for traditional conjunto indicates specific fusions of African American and Chicana/o
culture. His ability to blend rancheras with jazz, blues, soul, and funk presents
a cultural afromestizaje rooted in a rural Texas Mexican experience. As such,
Jordan’s mixture of ranchera with African American musical forms presents an
exploration of Chicana/o cultural history and reflects ongoing fluidity between
African American and Chicana/o culture.
“Squeeze Box Man”: Jordan’s Recorded Afromestiza/o Conjunto
Music
The album La Bamba (1965) presents one of the first recorded examples of
Jordan’s merging of rancheras and polkas with blues, jazz, soul, and funk.
Jordan’s release of the album marked the early roots of a recording career that
lasted over forty years. Throughout the album, Jordan and his brothers, from
Chicana/o working-class roots, expand notions of Texas conjunto by fusing
black and Chicana/o music arrangements. In the work, Jordan mixes an array
of musical styles that exhibit a cultural afromestizaje.
Jordan intertwines conjunto with blues on track 1 of side B, “Squeeze Box
Man.” The high-powered tune begins like a train approaching as the accordion cries in blues harmonica form. The up-tempo track is over 120 beats per
minute. The loud and punchy drumbeat rings out heavily on the one and two,
following a funky blues bass line in the key of C. The accordion shifts and
turns through an array of blues scales and ranchera notation. Throughout the
rest of the album, Jordan moves through various Texas Mexican and African
864 | American Quarterly
American musical forms, displaying his early interventions into afromestizaje
performance.
Later on in the album, the Jordan brothers present a cover of the Radiants’
“Ain’t No Big Thing,” exemplifying Jordan’s fusion of black and brown musical forms. A drumroll sets off the intro before the saxophone blares a quickly
muted quarter note. The Jordan brothers hum a doo-wop-flavored “Doo doo
doo doo doo,” complemented with a “Wooah wooah woooah” in the following bar. Jordan begins the hook, “Ain’t no big thang,” pronouncing “thing” as
“thang.” Similarly, “Run on your merry way” becomes “Run on yo merry way,”
reflecting the vocal enunciation of the soul classic. However, there are hints of
Chicano enunciations in the lyrics. These lyrical variations resemble Ruben
Guevara’s description of Little Julian Herrera’s music. According to Guevara,
Herrera’s music was played “very much in the black style, but something about
it—the accent, the voice, the attitude—made it different.”52 This difference
that Guevara identifies can also be heard as Jordan sings in a fusion of black
and Chicano aesthetics.
The next track, a cover of the Beatles’ “Run for Your Life,” off the Rubber
Soul album, begins with blues rhythm chords for two bars, followed by the
drum and bass, more upbeat and funkier than the Beatles’ version. An assortment of yells and chatter can be heard as the song’s first eight bars play. The
beat changes during the hook, and Jordan sings:
Run for yo life if you can, little girl
Hide yo head in the sand, little girl
The pronunciation of “your” as “yo” (ō), with emphasis on the long vowel,
projects African American vernacular.53 Jordan screams and yells in Wilson
Pickett form and ends with “Naa naa naas.” The instrumentation and vocal
performances of Jordan’s version adds soul to the Beatles song and presents the
fusion of black and brown sounds in a Texas conjunto context.
Also on the album, Jordan performs a cover of “If You Love Me Like You
Say” from the African American blues singer Little Johnny Taylor, also played
by the blues guitar legend Albert King. In Jordan’s version, guitar stabs carry
a funk quality reminiscent of James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.”
The drums and bass also follow a funk pattern. Near the end of the song,
Jordan shouts, “I got ya!” Yet, again, as Jordan engages in funk expression,
there is a hint of something different in his voice that adds a Chicanoness to
his funk performance.
After “If You Love Me Like You Say” follows Bobbie Bland’s “Love Lights,”
later covered by the Grateful Dead, among many others. The guitar chords
Locating Afromestizaje in Esteban Jordan’s Texas Conjunto Performance | 865
on Jordan’s version match Bland’s version, yet the bass is equalized higher and
at times peaks and overburdens the speakers. The lyrics are sung in a soul
style, yet the Tejano–Mexicano accents also ring through the track. “Shook
it down,” for example, turns into “chook it down.” Within the song, a drum
break takes over, and the rest of the instruments drop out while percussive
elements dominate. During this break and throughout the remainder of the
song, Jordan releases soulful screams and gritos in a fusion of African American
and Chicana/o performance.
Next, Jordan exemplifies his leanings toward jazz on “Misty,” a jazz standard
written in 1954 by the pianist Erroll Garner. Other artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Johnny Mathis have presented their own versions of
this jazz classic. In his instrumental version, Jordan performs the notation and
rhythm of the original, yet also adds ranchera scales on the accordion set to
two tracks: one part lead and the other rhythm. Throughout the track Jordan
maneuvers from ranchera to jazz styles in an expression of cultural afromestizaje.
Though the music contained on the La Bamba album covers a range of
styles, the Jordan brothers consistently focus on black musical forms. Even the
title implies connections to Mexico’s African Mexican presence.54 Switching
between accordion and guitar, Jordan performs a cultural afromestizaje through
blues, jazz, and soul notation, lyrics, and style. As Jordan continued to record,
he further included Afro-Latino and African American musical forms within
a conjunto context. His maturation, as well as the development of conjunto,
resulted in complex mixtures of performances that were often praised for their
innovation as well as critiqued as crossing the line too far from traditional
conjunto music. Similar to his recorded music, onstage Jordan fuses jazz, soul,
and conjunto in a way that demonstrates afromestiza/o musical forms at work.
Live at Saluté: Jordan’s Accordion Onstage
At an October 2006 performance at Saluté, a wiry Jordan opens with a rendition of “My Girl” and gazes across the room with a piercing eye, the other
covered by his patented black patch. He sports a bright purple shirt, black
slacks, and black zipper-heeled dress boots. The gold chains around his neck
complement the fat gold rings around his fingers. He leans to the right, tilting
his head back as he plays his accordion solo of the Motown classic. Breaking
from traditional conjunto style, predicated on lo ranchero aesthetics, Jordan’s
style is more urban and extravagant. He counts off “1, 2, 3” and starts the intro
to “Georgia on My Mind,” more of a Ray Charles soul version than Hoagy
Carmichael’s style. Jordan’s head moves back and forth as his fingers pound
866 | American Quarterly
out quick blues scales. Charles’s historic performance of this song comes to
mind as Jordan sings the song in a Tex-Mex southern drawl:
I said Georgia, Ooh Georgia; no peace I find
Just an old sweet song; keeps Georgia on my mind
Jordan sings and clutches the accordion; his knuckles protrude from under his
skin. His eyes are closed while fingers punch out selected notes played. His
words draw connections between Mexican and African American laborers in the
US South and Southwest. This “sweet old song” expresses travel and struggle.
Voices in the crowd sing along and shout, “Sing it brother!” Jordan ends the
tune with a high-pitched solo that makes his accordion sound like a trumpet.
Next is “Volver, Volver,” a mariachi standard that triggers loud yells from
the crowd. The song’s intro, as played by Vicente Fernandez, usually begins
with trumpets, but Jordan begins with his own notes on the accordion, shaking the buttons to create a syncopation effect. He starts singing the beginning
of the song:
Voy camino a la locura y aunque todo me tortura, se querer.
Nos dejamos hace tiempo, pero me llego el momento de perder
[I’m on the road to insanity and although it tortures me, I know how to love
We separated some time ago, but my time to lose has come]
When he reaches the chorus, Jordan and the crowd scream, “Volver, Volver!”
(come back, come back), expressing the hope of regaining a lost love. Jordan
lets out a grito as he leads his band over the slow mariachi rhythm, yet he
throws in blues leads, remixing this Mexican standard. Through a combination of gritos and jazz solo licks, Jordan demonstrates ongoing afromestiza/o
fusions in his music.
Jordan’s version of a zydeco favorite, “Don’t Mess with My Toot Toot,”
illustrates the interconnections between Tex-Mex and Creole accordion musicianship, as the accordion wails Tex/Mex/Creole sounds. The song is familiar
to the audience members, who dance Tejano style to a zydeco beat. Unlike
“Georgia,” in which Jordan sings all the lyrics in English, here he creates a
bilingual version of the famous zydeco song:
Don’t mess with my toot toot
Don’t mess with my toot toot
Puedes hablar con la que quieras
Locating Afromestizaje in Esteban Jordan’s Texas Conjunto Performance | 867
[you can talk to who you want]
Don’t you mess with my toot toot
¡Dale Gas!
As Jordan switches from Spanish to English, he maps linguistic connections
that uncover afromestiza/o language through the blending of Tex-Mex with
Louisiana Creole. Using the accordion as a mode of communication, Jordan
illustrates the colonial histories of the instrument present in both Tejano and
Creole culture.55 Also important is the use of a colloquial term, “Dale Gas,”
used primarily in Southwest Texas to signify “give it gas” or “pick it up.” The
phrase situates Jordan in a Tejano performance that linguistically mixes Spanish and Tex-Mex codes.
As the night concluded, I managed to work my way through the crowd and
to briefly speak with Jordan about his merging of musical styles. In response
to a query about why he chose to mix conjunto with styles such as jazz and
funk, Jordan answered, “Man, I toured with Willie Bobo; that music is part of
me.”56 Indeed, his effortless mix of jazz, funk, blues, and zydeco with conjunto
onstage reflects his own cultural afromestizaje. Jordan’s music transcends standard notions of conjunto style as simply a displaced rural-to-urban form that
derives from Mexican–German hybridity. He opens the door for even further
musical exploration. When Jordan mixes conjunto and soul, he expands readings of Tejana/o and black identity as he engages in African diasporic, African
American, Tejana/o, and Chicana/o performance. Along with his music, his
visual style, which follows traditions linked to shared spaces among black and
Latina/o youth in the United States, adds to his performance of an afromestiza/o
cultural identity.
Super Fly Ranchero: Jordan’s Reworking of Texas Conjunto Style
Jordan’s attire provides an example of how stylization communicates social
identity. His use of flashy suits, hats, and boots coincided with styles that many
youth of color have chosen to test the limits of mainstream US traditions of
dress. In relation to the Jim Crow era, Shane White and Graham White describe
how African Americans in Atlanta donned “fixy clothes” to escape “the daily
humiliations that Jim Crow exacted.”57 Others have examined how marginalized subjects utilize “dressing up” as a way to express upward mobility. Kobena
Mercer reads clothing from the zoot suit era, as well as “Super Fly” outfits from
the 1970s, in terms of a “defiant dandyism,” or “fronting out oppression by the
artful manipulation of appearances.”58 “Such dandyism,” Mercer argues, “is
868 | American Quarterly
a feature of the economy of style statements in many subaltern class cultures,
where ‘flashy’ clothes are used in the art of impression-management to defy
the assumption that to be poor one necessarily has to ‘show’ it.”59 Similar to
Mercer, Ted Polhemus discusses how the zoot suit functions as a subaltern
response to a hegemonic national collective style by “dressing up” rather than
“dressing down,” as white bohemian beatniks and hippies had done.60 Zoot
suit style also claimed presence and significance because of the continued
exclusion of African Americans and Mexican Americans from citizens’ rights
during World War II, many of whom fought, ironically, to combat oppressive
and discriminatory regimes on a global level.
Luis Alvarez discusses transculturation among African Americans and Mexican Americans during the World War II era that manifested in the wearing
of the extravagant zoot suit. The suit itself comprises a wide-brimmed hat, a
suit jacket with shoulder pads, pleated trousers, pointed shoes, and a chain
looped under the belt. These flashy designs challenged World War II concepts
of conservatism and patriotism and formulated nuances of identity politics
that strayed from white heteronormative performances of masculinity. For
marginalized youth in the 1940s, Alvarez notes:
While much of the wartime United States viewed the zoot as an icon for juvenile delinquency,
thousands of young African Americans and Mexican Americans wore the zoot because it
helped convert their social alienation, economic exploitation, and political marginalization
into a sense of security and “coolness” that enabled them to navigate in the highly segregated
and discriminatory society in which they lived.61
Black hepcats and Chicano pachucos adopted the zoot suit style nationwide,
and Los Angeles and New York became focal points of the growing culture.
Works on zoot suit poetics such as Zoot Suit (1981) and Murder at the Sleepy
Lagoon (2003) demonstrate the heightened popularity of the zoot suit among
Chicana/o youth, and the style of the jazz singer Cab Calloway as well as excerpts from the Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) illustrate the prominence
of the hepcat zoot suit among black Harlem youth.
Comparable to zoot suit stylization, Todd Boyd discusses the 1970s “Super
Fly” style among black Americans. According to Boyd, black youth engaged
in extravagant dress that allowed for a “free expression of a culture that was
hip, funky, and interested in its own overall sense of identity.”62 Boyd describes
how “large coats, hats, turtleneck sweaters, and gold jewelry were common
apparel worn by characters in movies such as Super Fly, Shaft, and The Mack,”
which promoted “a sense of liberation, a statement of self-determination on
the part of all those people who felt they were no longer going to appease the
Locating Afromestizaje in Esteban Jordan’s Texas Conjunto Performance | 869
mainstream taste.”63 Unlike the majority of conjunto artists who don cowboy
hats and boots, Jordan wears flashy urban suits and jewelry reminiscent of
Boyd’s “Super Fly” persona. On his album covers he sports heeled boots, flared
shirts, and feathered hats. For Jordan, the cowboy boots and straw hat do not
satisfy his identity politics. Instead, he chooses a more “Super Fly” presence.
In Texas conjunto, musicians exude a ranchera aesthetic through musical
styles by playing corridos and rancheras, as well as expressing this identity by
wearing cowboy hats, boots, and belt buckles. Broyles-González has discussed
these styles as exhibiting “lo ranchera.” In her discussion of the Texas Mexican
singer Lydia Mendoza’s wardrobe, Broyles-González writes that Mendoza embodies a ranchera “persona in her performances” and “manifests the ranchera
aesthetic in her dress.”64 Deviating from this tradition, Jordan’s style of dress
is framed by afromestiza/o sensibilities linked to both the zoot suit and later
“Super Fly” fashions worn by black and Chicano youth in the early twentieth
century and the 1970s, respectively.
Jordan’s accoutrement allows for a critical reading of afromestiza/o identity
in Tejana/o cultural expression (see fig. 1). The album cover of Soy de Tejas
(1979) projects a glittering background that emerges as both glamorous and
intergalactic. Lights bring out flair and style, illustrating the flash and shine of
city life. Meanwhile, Jordan’s cream-colored felt hat is tilted to the side as he
poses for the camera at an angle with a half grin on his face, projecting a sly
confidence. His flowery, butterfly-collar shirt displays bright colors of pink to
lime green, black, and orange. Around his neck rests a turquoise necklace and
a gold chain with anchor pendant. The turquoise and gold exhibit indigenous
roots along with his other outward stylistic expressions, which align with black
urban attire of the 1970s. He wears oversized, handcrafted silver rings on his
right hand that spurt out feathers and grains. On his left hand, he sports an
accordion ring, as well as a family portrait ring, and a gold watch around his
wrist. Jordan’s confident yet slanted pose along with his style of clothing implies
a separation from strict boundaries, as he does not look directly at the camera.
The album’s title, Soy de Tejas, implicates Jordan’s allegiance to his home state,
as well as a Texas Mexican style, which he layers in afromestiza/o aesthetics.
The second album cover, Con una Sonrisa (1980), finds Jordan on top of a
1936 Cadillac, two-toned brown and cream to match his suit (see fig. 2). The
car’s white-walled tires, suicide doors, and retro look elicit a gangster/mafia/
high-roller image, popular among black and Chicana/o marginalized youth to
this day. Jordan’s gigantic hat, oversized coat, and bell-bottomed pants align
him with Boyd’s idealized “Super Fly” character who dons “a slick vine (a great
suit)” and a “pimped-out Borsalino hat.”65 Jordan’s brown boots resemble the
870 | American Quarterly
Figure 1.
Steve Jordan, Soy de Tejas, 1979, Hacienda Records LP 7905, LP.
Figure 2.
Steve Jordan, Con Una Sonrisa, 1980, Hacienda Records LP 7917, LP.
Locating Afromestizaje in Esteban Jordan’s Texas Conjunto Performance | 871
same boots worn by Priest in Super Fly (1972) and Melvin Van Peebles in Sweet
Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1972). Jordan’s brown-and-cream plaid lapels match
his brown-and-cream plaid pants. In the background a palm tree accenting a
sand-colored building tropes Jordan as a Hollywood movie star. Jordan lets his
accordion dangle by his side, more like a jazz guitar, trumpet, or weapon as he
positions himself in a casual fashion, relaxed and “fly.” He looks out beyond
the sky, as if scanning the potential of the world around him.
While many other 1970s to early 1980s Tejana/o artists dressed in similar
styles (Little Joe y La Familia, Latin Breed, Tortilla Factory), Jordan foregrounds
a more traditional style of Texas conjunto often aligned by the media as well
as fans with conjunto legends such as Saldívar and De La Rosa, who dress in a
more ranchero fashion. Through album font styles, attire, and camera angles,
Jordan evokes the image of a Texas conjunto “Super Fly” musician more than
just in appearance, but in ontology, identity, and gestures. His decision to break
from Texas conjunto tradition yet remain connected to the culture reflects a
paradigmatic shift experienced by many Tejana/os who manage their identity
among changing sociological surroundings. Employing a “Super Fly” aesthetic,
Jordan transforms traditional models of conjunto and norteño style of artists such
as Saldívar, Longoria, Santiago Jimenez, Martínez, Rubén Vela, and Cornelio
Reyna. Jordan’s extravagant apparel allows him to confront and transcend his
marginalized position in the US social structure and demonstrates the ongoing
cultural merging between black and Chicana/o subjects in the United States.
Global and Local Fusions: Further Work in Studies of Afromestizaje
Applying afromestizaje as a concept to view the fusions of mestizaje and diasporic imaginaries, I have illustrated how Jordan’s conjunto performance blurs
the line between African American and Chicana/o cultural performance. As
Jordan reworks conjunto rancheras into blues and jazz songs, as well as his
interweaving of ranchera scales with soul classics, he demonstrates how the
scope of mestizaje and African diaspora can cover musical overlap among
black and Chicana/o artists. Likewise, Jordan’s wearing of “Super Fly” apparel
in rural conjunto spaces, normally requiring cowboy boots and hats, not only
challenges conjunto traditions but also demonstrates African American style
worn by one of Texas conjunto’s most celebrated artists. Jordan, through his
afromestiza/o conjunto performance, presents the opportunity to read, analyze, and discuss the bridging of black and Chicana/o culture through Tejano
musical expression. Furthermore, applying an afromestizaje reading to other
872 | American Quarterly
musical performances by black and Chicana/o artists pressures racial categories, hierarchies, and provides a greater lens through which to view black and
Chicana/o cultural imaginaries.
For instance, an afromestizaje scope can reveal how African American cultural
forms have helped shape what eventually became Tejano music. Though the
marketing of early music in the United States set ethnic and racial boundaries
in recorded music, Tejanos continue to engage in transcultural exchange with
African Americans and Afro-Latinos. As Tejano musicians fused rural conjunto with jazzy orquesta music, they also incorporated African American and
Afro-Latino musical forms heard on the radio and seen in live performance.
Early examples of these mixtures can be found in Chicana/o performance of
doo-wop, R&B, and soul. These mixtures culminated in the development of
a commercialized Tejano music. Later, the Tejano musician Selena embodied
these mixtures in the larger US pop culture and pushed the direction of Tejano
music to a mainstream spotlight. Correspondingly, Chicana/os listened to and
participated in hip-hop culture and engaged in transcultural exchange with
black American youth culture. These fusions can be heard in artists such as
UGK, South Park Mexican, Chingo Bling, and Baby Bash, to name a few. In
the 2000s, with the resurgence of funk music, Texas Chicano collectives such
as Grupo Fantasma, Brownout, and Bombasta demonstrate black and brown
cultural fusions through musical performance, opening the doors for further
examination of afromestizaje.
An afromestiza/o lens also offers the potential to analyze the participation of
individual black musicians in the development of Tejano music. The Motown
artist Bobby Taylor, for example, contributed to the Westside sound, playing
in San Antonio’s barrios and bringing his own knowledge of blues, jazz, and
soul to the area. Bobby Butler, known as “El Charro Negro,” of the Tortilla
Factory, has become one of the best-known voices in Tejano music, both as a
member of the band and as a solo artist. The saxophone player Spot Barnett
gained prominence not only as a bandleader on San Antonio’s historically black
Eastside but as a major component of the Chicano band West Side Horns.
The lead vocalist Dee Burleson was a central member of one of Tejano’s most
popular groups, Culturas, known for their multicultural influences and dynamic
stage shows. Thus there remain further instances of black/Tejana/o musical
interweavings to examine.
Likewise, Chicana/o input on black popular musical expression remains
unexplored. Histories of black entertainers reveal how Mexican street singers
and their musical styles influenced black blues guitar players. Naváez explores
this occurrence, explaining how blues artists such as Robert Johnson and
Locating Afromestizaje in Esteban Jordan’s Texas Conjunto Performance | 873
Lightnin’ Hopkins frequently “encountered Mexican-made bajo sextos and
twelve-string guitars, instruments originally from central Mexico which at the
time were emerging, along with the accordion, as core instruments of border
conjunto.”66 Narváez also identifies striking similarities between the blues legend Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter’s “Sweet Jenny Lee” and Lydia Mendoza’s
earlier recorded “El Lirio.” A further look into how Chicana/os helped shape
Texas blues as well as other genres identified as black music can help broaden
the scope of African diasporic and mestiza/o imaginaries.
Scholars who focus on black and brown cultural exchanges continue to
provide important foundations to analyze afromestiza/o culture and identity.
In her exploration of “Afro-Chicano” culture, Gaye Johnson examines how
the “history of cultural and political interaction through the lens of music”
reveals the “interlaced subject positions of African Americans and Chicanos”
in California.67 Additionally, Pancho McFarland explains the popularization
of Chicano rap in terms of a “new millennial mestizaje/mulataje consisting of
Mexican/Chicana/o, African (American) and European (American) elements.”68
Furthermore, Anthony Macias theorizes African American and Mexican American musical connections using the “west African” term mojo as a trope to define
Mexican American and African American transculturation.69 Ruben Molina
illustrates how a growing number of Chicana/os around the United States play
“Chicano Soul,” a result of black and brown musical cross-pollination.70 These
works have begun an important discussion on black and Chicana/o cultural
ties through music and expand paradigms to include blackness in discussions
of mestizaje and Chicana/o poetics.
Concepts of mestizaje and African diaspora studies both allow for fluid
ways to read culture and identity. Though scholars continue to debate the
problematic colonial history attached to the term mestizaje, the reworking
of the concept, its resignification and iteration that has produced this shift,
allows the term to be a constructive tool to theorize Chicana/o culture and
identity. Furthermore, African diaspora studies allows for the examination of
black transnational movements within the Chicana/o imaginary and aids in
examining cultural fusions among black and Latina/o culture and identity.
Drawing on the overlap between mestiza/o and African diasporic imaginaries
also leads to a greater push toward bridging black and Latino cultural identity
through what Laó-Montes calls “Afro-Latinidad.” According to Laó-Montes,
“an Afro-diasporic decolonial imaginary could be a foundation for a new alliance between black studies and Latino studies, a transdiasporic alliance for
which Afro-Latinidades should and must bridge.”71 The potential fusion of
Chicana/o and African American imaginaries under the lens of afromestizaje
874 | American Quarterly
presents exciting possibilities for understanding the link between black and
Chicana/o cultural fusions to a broader concept of Afro-Latinidad. Therefore, analyzing musical afromestizaje among black and Chicana/o subjects, in
particular, allows for a fuller understanding of the interconnections among
communities on the margins of society in the United States.
Notes
I would like to thank Esteban Jordan and the Jordan family for those soulful Texas conjunto nights at
Saluté. Thanks to Azeneth Dominguez, Ramón Hernández, and Nephtali De Leon for their friendship
and willingness to assist me with this essay. I send acknowledgements to Hacienda Records and Jordan
Records, Inc. for their contributions to my research. I would also like to thank the Ford Foundation
for helping fund my dissertation research of which a chapter was used for this piece. I send gratitude
to my mentors Ben Olguín, Keta Miranda, Joycelyn Moody, Josie Méndez-Negrete, Sonia Saldívar
Hull, and Norma Cantú for their direction and guidance during the writing of this essay. Lastly, mil
gracias to the musicians and music lovers of San Antonio, Texas who continue to motivate my work.
1. Azeneth Dominguez, interview with author, San Antonio, TX, May 15, 2009.
2. Ramiro Burr, The Billboard Guide to Tejano and Regional Mexican Music (New York: Billboard Books,
1999), 124.
3. Alex Avila, “No Rules: The Life and Music of Esteban Jordan,” Latino USA, National Public Radio,
September 15, 2008, http://latinousa.kut.org/2010/03/18/the-reclusive-esteban-‘steve’-jordan/.
4.Ibid.
5.Burr, Billboard Guide, 124.
6. Juan Tejeda and Avelardo Valdez, Puro Conjunto! An Album in Words and Pictures (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 2001), xv.
7. Hector Saldaña, “Conjunto Legend Sent Off in Style,” San Antonio Express News, August 19, 2010,
www.mysanantonio.com/news/article/Conjunto-legend-sent-off-in-style-623080.php#ixzz1lwukLo78.
8. Terence McArdle, “Esteban ‘Steve’ Jordan, virtuoso accordionist, dies at 71,” Washington Post, August
15, 2010, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2010/08/esteban-steve-jordan-virtuoso.
html.
9. Joel Guzman, “No Rules: The Life and Music of Esteban Jordan,” Latino USA, National Public Radio,
September 15, 2008, http://latinousa.kut.org/2010/03/18/the-reclusive-esteban-‘steve’-jordan/.
10. Callie Enlow, “El Parche Slips Away,” San Antonio Current, August 18, 2010, www2.sacurrent.com/
news/story.asp?id=71458.
11. Quoted in ibid.
12. Ramon Hernandez, “El Sabio del acordeon,” ramiroburr.com, August 15, 2011, www.ramiroburr.
com/true/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=729:esteban-jordan-el-sabio-delacordeon-&catid=3:newsflash.
13. Juan Flores, The Diaspora Strikes Back: Caribeño Tales of Learning and Turning (New York: Routledge,
2009), 3.
14.Ibid.
15. Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar (New York: Knopf, 1947), 102.
16. José Vasconcelos, La Raza Cósmica, trans. Didier Tisdel Jaén (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1997), 32.
17. María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, “‘How Many Mexicans [Is] a Horse Worth?’: The League of United
Latin American Citizens, Desegregation Cases, and Chicano Historiography,” South Atlantic Quarterly
107.4 (2008): 15.
18. Taunya Lovell Banks, “Unreconstructed Mestizaje and the Mexican Mestizo Self: No Hay Sangre
Negra, So There Is No Blackness,” Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal 15 (2006): 203.
Locating Afromestizaje in Esteban Jordan’s Texas Conjunto Performance | 875
19. Néstor García Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 11.
20. Suzanne Bost, Mulattas and Mestizas: Representing Mixed Identities in the Americas (Athens: University
of Georgia Press, 2003), 8.
21. Rafael Pérez-Torres, Mestizaje: Critical Uses of Race in Chicano Culture (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1990), 3.
22. Alicia Arrizón, Queering Mestizaje: Transculturation and Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2006), 4.
23. Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Oye Como Va: Hybridity and Identity in Latino Popular Music (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 2012), 9.
24. Chicana feminist scholars have theorized mestizaje to confront not only a patriarchal US power structure but also multiple levels of subordination within patriarchal Chicana/o institutions. See Gloria
Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1999); Chela Sandoval,
Methodology of the Oppressed (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000); and Emma Pérez,
The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).
25. Patrick Manning, The African Diaspora: A History through Culture (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2009), 1.
26. Ibid., 3.
27.Ibid.
28.Ibid.
29. James Clifford, “Diasporas,” Cultural Anthropology 9.3 (1994): 307.
30. Tiffany Ruby Patterson and Robin D. G. Kelley, “Unfinished Migrations: Reflections on the African
Diaspora and the Making of the Modern World,” African Studies Review 43.1 (2000): 12.
31. Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader,
ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 394.
32. Agustin Laó-Montes, “Afro-Latinidades: Bridging Blackness and Latinidad,” in Technofuturos: Critical
Interventions in Latina/o Studies, ed. Nancy Raquel Mirabal and Agustin Laó-Montes (Lanham, MD:
Lexington Books, 2007), 118.
33. Pacini Hernandez, Oye Como Va, 17.
34. Ibid., 18.
35. Peter Narváez, “The Influences of Hispanic Music Cultures on African American Blues Musicians,”
Black Music Research Journal 14.2 (1994): 222.
36. David Evans, Big Road Blues: Tradition and Creativity in the Folk Blues (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 109.
37. William C. Banfield, Cultural Codes: Makings of a Black Music Philosophy (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow,
2010), 7.
38. Langston Hughes, “Jazz as Communication,” Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/
essay/237856 (accessed June 14, 2012).
39. Amiri Baraka, Blues People: Negro Music in White America (New York: William Morrow, 1963), xii.
40. Houston A. Baker Jr., Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1984), 3.
41. Iain Anderson, This Is Our Music: Free Jazz, the Sixties, and American Culture (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 99.
42. Nelson George, Post-Soul Nation: The Explosive, Contradictory, Triumphant, and Tragic 1980s as Experienced by African Americans (Previously Known as Blacks and before That Negroes) (New York: Viking,
2004), viii.
43. Manuel H. Peña, The Texas-Mexican Conjunto: History of a Working-Class Music (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1985), 9.
44. Ibid., 138.
45. Ibid., 134.
46. Ruben Molina, Chicano Soul: Recordings and History of an American Culture (La Puente, CA: Mictlan,
2007), 3.
47.Ibid.
48. José R. Reyna, “Tejano Music as an Expression of Nationalism,” in Tejeda and Valdez, Puro Conjunto!,
195.
876 | American Quarterly
49. Guadalupe San Miguel Jr., Tejano Proud: Tex-Mex Music of the Twentieth Century (College Station:
Texas A&M University Press, 2002), 66.
50. Yolanda Broyles-González, “Indianizing Catholicism: Chicana/India/Mexicana Indigenous Spiritual
Practices in Our Image,” in Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change, ed. Norma E. Cantú and Olga
Nájera-Ramirez (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 187.
51. Manuel Peña, “The Emergence of Conjunto Music, 1935–1955,” in Tejeda and Valdez, Puro Conjunto!,
19.
52. Rubén Guevara, “The View from the Sixth Street Bridge: The History of Chicano Rock,” in The Rock
History Reader, ed. Theo Cateforis (New York: Routledge, 2007), 37–42.
53. Geneva Smitherman, Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 304. Smitherman translates “yo” as “Your” (as in “your house”), pronounced yo,
following rules of African American language.
54. Marco Polo Hernández-Cuevas, African Mexicans and the Discourse on Modern Nation (Lanham, MD:
University Press of America, 2004), 43. Hernández-Cuevas discusses the African roots in the Mexican
music genre son jarocho. Son jarocho formed the basis of traditional Mexican songs such as “La Bamba”
and “Guadalajara.”
55. The role of the accordion in Texas zydeco music proves crucial for analysis, not only because Jordan
plays zydeco music on his accordion but also because zydeco, like Tejano music, grew out of a complex past of colonization and racial discrimination. Like Tejana/os, Louisiana Creoles maintained an
accordion-based music that separated them from the Euro-American hegemony; however, zydeco
music also distinguished Creoles from African Americans.
56. Esteban Jordan, interview with author, San Antonio, TX, September 5, 2009.
57. Shane White and Graham White, “Strolling, Jooking, and Fixy Clothes,” in Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin’,
and Slam Dunking, ed. Gena Dagel Caponi (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 435.
58. Kobena Mercer, Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge,
1994), 120.
59.Ibid.
60. ed Polhemus, Street Style: From Sidewalk to Catwalk (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994), 17.
61. Luis Alvarez, The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 94.
62. Todd Boyd, The Notorious Ph.D.’s Guide to the Super Fly ’70s: A Connoisseur’s Journey through the
Fabulous Flix, Hip Sounds, and Cool Vibes That Defined a Decade (New York: Harlem Moon, 2007),
8.
63. Ibid., 6.
64. Broyles-González, “Indianizing Catholicism,” 187.
65.Boyd, Notorious Ph.D.’s Guide, 4.
66. Narváez, “Influences of Hispanic Music Cultures,” 185.
67. Gaye Johnson, “A Sifting of Centuries: Afro-Chicano Interaction and Popular Musical Culture in
California, 1960–2000,” in Decolonial Voices: Chicana and Chicano Cultural Studies in the TwentyFirst Century, ed. Arturo J. Aldama and Naomi Quiñonez (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press,
2002), 317.
68. Pancho McFarland, “Chicano Rap Roots: Black-Brown Cultural Exchange and the Making of a Genre,”
Callaloo 29.3 (2006): 939.
69. Anthony Macias, Mexican American Mojo: Popular Music, Dance, and Urban Culture in Los Angeles,
1935–1968 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 2.
70.Molina, Chicano Soul, 1.
71. Laó-Montes, “Afro-Latinidades,” 135–36.