April 5, 2009, 11:33AM
BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Just before the sun disappears behind Juan Longoria’s Brownsville home, the sound of an accordion cuts through the half-light.
For Longoria’s neighbors it’s a familiar sound — a blend of Conjunto, Norteno and Tejano music played by one of the region’s virtuosos.
This backyard is where it started for Longoria — at small family gatherings and pachangas, where he was allowed to jam with brothers and uncles well into the night. Back then, he was still learning his way around the accordion, still struggling to keep up with the fast pace of conjunto sessions. A lot has changed since the early 1980s.
In 2007, Longoria won The Big Squeeze accordion competition, proof that the kid from Brownsville had become one of the state’s best musicians. Now, two years later, he’s featured in a new documentary about accordion-driven music, also called “The Big Squeeze.” The film, which premiered at the South by Southwest film festival last month in Austin, follows Longoria’s ascent in the statewide competition, shedding light on the South Texas music scene, with its multigenerational ties, its stories of love, heartbreak and tradition.
“It’s something that has been passed on to me, and something I hope to pass on to my son,” Longoria said.
After “The Big Squeeze” premiered, Longoria took the stage at the festival with several other musicians to play for an audience of about 200 people.
“There were people who’d never heard the music before and others who had grown up with it,” said the film’s director, Hector Galan. “But everyone loved it.”
For Longoria, a maintenance worker at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, the festival was one of the highlights of his musical career. It’s not often, he says, that his music garners that kind of attention. For traditionalists, Longoria’s genre-bending technique can be frustrating.
“Sometimes people ask us what kind of style we play,” he said. “They don’t understand that we don’t stick to a single type of music. They don’t want to experiment the way we do.”
Longoria’s sound marks an important evolution in the musical styling of the border, according to The Big Squeeze judges. It’s an evolution that his band, Conteno, which features Longoria’s brother, Frederico, hopes to continue. The band plays parties and festivals around the Valley.
“It’s more than just music; it’s tradition,” Galan said. “And you see young kids perpetuating the tradition, playing 100-year-old songs.”
Though that tradition varies by region, culture and even family, Longoria’s music touches on the best of it all, blurring the lines that once restricted South Texas accordion players.
“Some people say, You play accordion too Mexican.’ Others say, You play too Tex-Mex,’ ” Longoria said. “But you can’t blame me. Down here on the border, we’re into a little bit of everything.”
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