by Alan Schaefer with the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University
This Week in Texas Music History, the modern conjunto band takes shape in the hands of an accordion master.
On November 1, 1931, accordionist and bandleader Tony de la Rosa was born in Sarita, a small South Texas community historically connected to the King Ranch. By the age of ten he was playing local dances, and by sixteen he left farmwork behind and began to pursue music full time.
De la Rosa first recorded for the Arco label in 1949 at age eighteen and then for the premier regional label Ideal in the early 1950s. De la Rosa had been influenced by conjunto pioneers Narciso Martinez and Santiago Jimenez, Sr., but also incorporated what he was hearing in Texas honky-tonk, even performing regularly in Kingsville-area country-western bands. By adding electric bass and a full drum kit to his conjunto performances, just as was being done in those 1950s honky-tonk groups, de la Rosa helped shape the contemporary conjunto sound.The result was a slightly slowed-down tempo for the dance floor and a more artful, spacious presentation for polkas and rancheras. By the mid-1950s, de la Rosa’s conjunto was the most popular accordion-based group in Texas.
He toured widely and recorded for noted Texas labels such as Bernal, Bego, and Freddie before issuing records on his own De La Rosa label. De la Rosa was inducted into the Conjunto Hall of Fame in 1992 and received a National Heritage Fellowship award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1998, able to collect his flowers and reflect on his legacy before his passing in 2004.
Sources:
Ray Cano, Jr. in Laurie E. Jasinski, Gary Hartman, Casey Monahan, and Ann T. Smith, eds. The Handbook of Texas Music. Second Edition. Denton, TX: Texas State Historical Association, 2012.
Manuel Peña. Musica Tejana: The Cultural Economy of Artistic Transformation. College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1999.
Media:
Tony de la Rosa, “Atotoniclo Polka” and “No me Culpes”
Tony de la Rosa, “Cuatro Paredes”
