Tex-Mex

Tex-Mex, also known as Tejano music, is a genre born on the border between Texas and Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century, the product of an encounter between Mexican-American communities and European immigrants — Germans, Poles, and Czechs — who brought with them the accordion and the polka. This singular fusion produced a warm, danceable sound rooted in the norteño traditions of northern Mexico while absorbing country and folk influences from the American South. The corrido and mariachi provided the melodic foundations onto which Continental rhythms were grafted.

Musically, Tex-Mex is defined by the ubiquitous diatonic accordion, the bajo sexto — a twelve-string bass guitar — and rhythmic structures borrowed from the polka and vals ranchero. Voices, often powerful and ornamented, sing in Spanish of territory, love, and border identity. The genre evolved over the decades by incorporating electric keyboards, synthesisers, and pop arrangements that brought it to a mainstream audience in the late twentieth century.

Among the key figures on this scene, Peter Rowan perfectly illustrates the porous boundary between Tex-Mex and bluegrass: this American guitarist and composer, inducted into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame in 2022, collaborated with Flaco Jimenez in the Mexican Free Air Force. Other pillars of the genre such as Selena, Intocable, and Texas Tornados carried Tejano music to the top of American and Latin charts.

On FestT, Tex-Mex features at Latin and world music festivals that celebrate the richness of border cultures. Peter Rowan represents the bridge between American and Mexican traditions, alongside artists who set crowds moving to the sound of accordion and bajo sexto. Find every Tex-Mex festival on FestT and let this irresistible border sound sweep you away.