(Courtesy photo/Albert Villegas)
By ALBERT VILLEGAS
Special to the NEWS
To say there was a connection last week inside the Texas Conjunto Music Hall of Fame & Museum during an event aptly named “The Accordion’s Cultural Connection” is an understatement.
Musicians who traveled to the San Benito museum from the north, including the Midwest, joined local players in front of about 20 people and explained how they began to play an instrument that dates back to the 19th century.
It was a bridging of various cultures through European polkas, and local conjunto, Tejano, Norteno music – and the guests served as eyewitnesses, many of them using their cellphones to record familiar and foreign songs that had titles such as “The Austrian March,” “Path to Marabia (sung in Czech),” “Roll Out the Barrel,” “Noche Azul.”
Some common characteristics the musicians shared was emotion and a feel as their fingers touched the accordion keyboard and bass buttons. Their bodies moved to the sound they created while simultaneously controlling the inward and outward bellow to produce polka or conjunto music.
Patricia Avila, the museum’s executive director, said the event served as an educational event to merge German Czech and conjunto.
She introduced Alex Meixner, who anchored the presentation on how the accordion has bridged the musical gap between Europe and the Americas.
Meixner is a fourth-generation musician who specializes in blends of Austrian German, Slovanian Croatian, Czech, Slovak, Polish music.
Meixner and others braved inclement weather to travel to San Benito from New Braunfels. He was accompanied by Danny Jerabek, of Wisconsin, Zeke Martinez, of Ennis, and Dr. Michael William Patrick Fortunato, of Pittsburgh, Penn.
Meixner met local musician and instructor Juan Longoria, Jr. at an Austin accordion competition event in 2019.
Longoria, who is a second-generation musician who started to play the accordion at age nine, also teaches the conjunto program at Los Fresnos High School. He performs with his family in Grupo Conteño.
“I was so impressed with the Los Fresnos students and told Juan, ‘We need to do something together,’ so here we are,” Meixner said. “It’s awesome to hear young people, and then to see the history that has been preserved in this part of the world.”
Juan Longoria III was also in attendance, and he has his with Grupo Secretto.
Longoria played alongside his uncle, Romulo Longoria, Jr., who jammed with his bass guitar.
As Juan, Sr. stood next to Meixner on the museum’s compact stage, he said, decades ago, Mexican citizens, in what would become Texas, “adapted the polka, and gave it a little twist.”
“But what you hear these visiting musicians play has a lot of similarities to what we have come to know in the Valley,” Longoria said.
Martinez said when he became a teenager in his hometown, which is just south of Dallas, he began to play with a conjunto band. It was then when he started to appreciate Czech music, too, since there is a large Czech community in Ellis County.
“It took off from there, and I was playing for nearly a decade, and started doing Czech music around that area,” Martinez said.
Dr. Fortunato is of Italian heritage. He has a doctorate in applied sociology, and he is versed in five languages. He played the saxophone and clarinet alongside the accordionists.
One of the final songs that Dr. Fortunato sang was the standard Mexican ballad, “Volver, Volver.” The interactive audience sang along with him. Once the song concluded, all the musicians received a thunderous applause.
“Driving down to San Benito, there was a lot of rain on the road, and we weren’t sure this event was going to happen,” Meixner said. “This trip was so worth it.”
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