Tex-Mex

Music of the Texas-Mexican Borderlands

Along the 1000 miles of the Rio Grande, Mexican and American cultures have mingled to produce Tex-Mex music, an exuberant style with a Mexican soul and a rock 'n' roll heart. Like most border regions, the Tex-Mex area is a cultural stewpot marked by violence, illegal immigrants, drug running and shady through cantinas, prisons, festivals, even brothels where Tex-Mex music grows. Caught in performance and intimate conversation are Lydia Mendoza, one of the last great corrido singers whose career stretches back to the 1930's, Flaco Jimenez, the old style button accordion player who injected a Tex-Mex flavor into the music of Ry Cooder and Paul Simon, political firebrand Little Joe Hernandez and many other great performers of norteno, corrida and other Tex-Mex styles.

Beats of the Heart is a fourteen-part series of music documentaries by noted English filmmaker Jeremy Marre. Each part examines from a street-level perspective a different music scene from around the world. Artists from myriad cultures are captured in moments of spontaneous performance and intimate revelation.