Legends & Legacies

In the world of accordion-driven Tejano conjunto music, or Tex-Mex, the Grammy-award winners Flaco Jiménez and Max Baca are both pillars of the past and forgers of the future. Legends & Legacies finds the two musicians – each an inheritor of the past with a famous father or grandfather – coming together to make beautiful music. Jiménez makes an accordion sing more sweetly than almost anyone while Baca is a master of the bajo sexto (a 12-string, deep pitched guitar). Backed by drums and electric bass, the duo create a dynamic, beautifully recorded music aimed at dancers in Texan dancehalls but also very enjoyable as home listening. The duo have worked together across the decades – when Jiménez was a member of The Texas Tornadoes (with the now deceased Doug Sahm and Freddy Fender) he bought Baca into the group. But Legends & Legacies does not try to extend the fusion of conjunto with rock and country that the Tornadoes pioneered. Instead, this is the roots music that the Mexican workers have danced to across the decades and the cumbias, polkas, rancheros and waltzes the duo play are fresh and timeless. Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt with these musicians. Instead it makes for a dynamic, very warm music that is a pure pleasure to listen to.