Santiago jimenez jr biography
- (aka Santiago Henriquez Jiménez) (born April 8, 1944) is an.
- Santiago Jiménez Jr. is an American folk musician who received a National Heritage Fellowship in 2000 for lifetime achievement in traditional Tex-Mex/folk music, and a National Medal of Arts in 2016.
- Santiago Jiménez, Jr., born in 1944, was heir to a rich family tradition of button accordion playing.
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Santiago Jiménez, Jr.
By: Brian Berger
April 8, 2012
“Mi vida es un estoria muy loca” (“My life is a crazy story”), says “El Chief,” SANTIAGO JIMÉNEZ JR. (born 1944), foremost living exponent of traditional conjunto music. His father, “Don” Santiago Jiménez (1913-84), was one of the genre’s pioneers. While, like the blues, conjunto’s exact provenance is unknown, it assuredly springs from some meeting of central European (German, Czech, Polish) and Mexican cultures in southern and central Texas. Jiménez Sr. — like fellow Lone Star native Ernest Tubb — first recorded in 1936 and his sound became his son’s: two-row button accordion (Jr. performs “Viva Seguin” solo, below), bajo sexto (a 12-string guitar) and tololoche (acoustic bass); later, drums and electric bass were added as necessary. Glorious as this was, unlike its country-western coeval honky-tonk, conjunto remained a regional phenomenon, one supported almost exclusively by the Tejano working class, of which the Jiménez family of San Antonio’s La Piedrea barrio were part. Thus, when in the e
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Biography
For more information, contact:Ashley Moyer
Rounder Records
amoyer@rounder.com
Born in 1944, Santiago Jimenez Jr. was a singer and accordionist whose father made a significant contribution to the conjunto instrumental style. Conjunto, the accordion-based social music of Mexico and South Texas, was a style rooted in tradition. While his brother Flaco Jimenez mixed its sound with modern influences like jazz and country, Santiago upheld the traditions of his father and concentrated on the basic formula of two-button accordion with guitar and voice accompaniment. He released numerous albums, including a 1960 collaboration between his brother and him, numerous singles on local pressings, and a series of Spanish-language releases for the Rounder and Watermelon labels throughout the late '80s and 1990s.
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Santiago Jimenez, Jr.Sounds Like:
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Santiago Jiménez Sr. , Leonardo "Flaco" JiménezAirPlay Direct Member Since:
12/18/17Profile Last Updated:
08/14/23 14:45:17
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Bio
Texas-Mexican conjunto music is an original American creation. In the late 19th century, German, Polish, and Czech immigrants settled in the predominantly Mexican region of the Texan Rio Grande valley, bringing with them popular forms of dance music such as the polka, waltz, schottische, mazurka, and redowa. These international social dance vogues had already been introduced into Mexican society on both sides of the border. Their deep rootedness in the large immigrant communities, however, gave these music and dance forms greater prominence -- and permanence -- in southern Texas and in neighboring northern Mexico. Along with the dancing came a certain musical instrument that had swept across Europe and beyond since its invention earlier in the century -- the diatonic button accordion. Tejanos -- Texans of Mexican descent--quickly adopted this raucous instrument as their own, and, over time, they built around it a musical group that would come to be strongly identified with their regional culture. This group is called simply the conjunto -- literally, combo, or ensemble.
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