Tex-Mex: Music of the Texas Mexican Borderlands

Along the 1000 miles of the Rio Grande, Mexican and American cultures have mingled to produce Tex-Mex music, an exuberant style with a Mexican soul and a rock `n` roll heart (with a twist of German polka!). Like most border regions, the Tex-Mex area is a cultural stewpot marked by violence, illegal immigrants, drug running and shady business dealings. Tex-Mex is a street-level tour of this border world, through cantinas, prisons, festivals, even brothels, where Tex-Mex music grows. Caught in performance and intimate conversation are Lydia Mendoza, one of the last great corrido singers whose career stretches back to the 1930`s, Flaco Jimenez, the old style button accordion player who injected Tex-Mex flavor into the music of Ry Cooder and Paul Simon, political firebrand Little Joe Hernandez and many other great performers of norteno, corrida and other Tex-Mex styles.