What It Means to Be Tex-Mex
Tish Hinojosa
At Freight & Salvage, Sunday October 25 (1998)
Some people have identity crises. Tish Hinojosa has identity celebrations. Before a full house at the Freight & Salvage last Sunday night, the Austin-based singer-songwriter revealed enough musical personas to fill a multicultural choir. She started the evening with an old Mexican waltz, "Farolito" by Augustin Lara, and sang most of the fifty-minute first set either in Spanish or sliding back and forth between Spanish and English with a single song. In the hour-long second set she trotted out her western swing and country credentials, veered briefly back into traditional Mexican territory, dipped into crossover pop, and unveiled three new songs that could almost pass for indie rock. Few other artists in folk or pop touch so many bases with such authenticity an unaffected charm.
Strumming an acoustic guitar on all but a handful of tunes, Hinojosa was joined on stage in "unplugged" fashion by four superb musicians from her Austin circle of friends: longtime accompanist Marvin Dykhuis on guitar and mandolin, pianist Chip Dolan, bassist Glenn Kawamoto, and drummer Phil Bass, who made the most of a single snare, brushes and bongos. As the supremely empathetic quintet negotiated a nearly all-original repertoire of 21 songs, Hinojosa modestly paraded the variegated talents that make her both an uncommonly engaging performer and a seemingly unsolvable riddle for the music industry.
Hinojosa grew up in San Antonio, the youngest of thirteen daughters born to immigrant parents. Her cultural pride reinforced by her mother's passion for romantic Mexican popular music on the radio and her father's love for accordion and conjunto tunes on the jukebox, Hinojosa was also thoroughly beguiled by the jangly pop of the Beatles and the Byrds. So when she started performing as a teenager, it was natural that she would cover Bob Dylan and Linda Ronstadt tunes in the San Antonio clubs and entertain tourists on the River Walk with folkloric material. Moving away from San Antonio in 1979, and living in Taos and Nashville before settling in Austin in 1988, Hinojosa absorbed the influences of progressive country, as well, gradually forging a uniquely personalized take on what it means to be Mex-Tex.
Hinojosa's recordings have largely been bilingual projects, from her first independently produced work (some of which was compiled last year by Watermelon as The Best of Sandia), through the 1989 A&M release Homeland and 1992's Indie "folk album of the year" Culture Swing, to her most recent releases - the children's album Cada Niño/Every Child and the metaphysically informed pop CD Dreaming from the Labyrinth/Sonar del Laberinto. The sense that the recording industry doesn't quite know how to cope with an artist who appeals as much to fans of Flaco Jimenez and Brave Combo as to those of Linda Ronstadt is borne out by the fact that from 1994 through 1996 Hinojosa recorded four albums for two different labels - Warner Bros. and Rounder - and that at the moment she is without any record deal at all.
But the diffidence of the suits hasn't slowed Hinojosa a bit. In 1995, following the release of her roots music survey album Frontejas, she mounted an ambitiously eclectic "Border Tour" with fellow Texans Santiago Jimenez, Butch Hancock, and Don Walser. Earlier this year she joined Stella Cheweshe of Zimbabwe and Peru's Susana Baca for the "Global Divas" tour, which stopped at Zellerbach Hall in March. In recent weeks she has started recording demos for her next album, confident that it will find its way to market by next spring.
Judging by the turnout and the adoring response at the Freight, Hinojosa's audience isn't fazed by what the industry considers a conundrum, either. What mattered most Sunday night was sound and spirit: the fragile purity of Hinojosa's clear, cool soprano on affectionate ballads, lilting waltzes, and such children's songs as "Cada Niño," "Hasta Los Muertos Salen a Bailar," and "Simpre Abuelita"; the way she seamlessly shifted from songs with heavy social implications such as "Something in the Rain" (about the poisoned fields tilled by farmworkers) and "Las Marias" (who work in strangers' homes and kitchens while dreaming of their own) to bright melodic pop tunes bubbling up from private philosophical musings, such as "The Dreams I Have Seen" and "God's Own Open Road"; the accordion-driven norteño party flavor of "Chanate, El Vaquero," "Con Su Pluma en Su Mano," and "Cumbia, Polka Y Mas"; and the gripping musicianship of the band, especially Dykhuis' mercurial guitar picking and Dolan's barrelhouse, roll-over-Hornsby virtuosity on piano and accordion.
After a nearly two-hour show that balanced polished professionalism with a casual stage manner, Hinojosa sat at the edge of the stage autographing Cds and photographs until the last fan had gone, leaving the lasting impression of an artist who knows exactly who she is and where she wants to be.
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