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Sunday, July 3rd, 2005Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TX)
October 9, 2004 Section: Life & Arts Edition: FINAL Page: 1F
Discrimination fueled career of filmmaker
DAVID SEDENO Star-Telegram Staff Writer
AUSTIN–Hector Galan had heard the stories about his Latino friends being kicked out of nightclubs in and around Lubbock. Wrong hair. Wrong clothes. Wrong look, they were told. Then, one night, it happened to him.
As he stood near the dance floor, a bouncer told him he was not welcome and escorted him out. He didn’t offer a reason, but Galan had no doubt that it was because of his skin color. Something changed in him that night in 1979. And soon enough, he would go about trying to change something in the world. “You would go to a club and you either were not wearing the right color of shirt or your jeans weren’t French cut or your hair was too long,” said Galan, who was working in Lubbock after graduating from Texas Tech. “They would come up with all kinds of reasons not to let you in, but I never thought it would happen to me. “But it did happen to me, and I was really mad. I felt that I had to do something about it.” Armed with a video camera, Galan returned to the club and to several others and produced Disco Discrimination, a documentary that examined Lubbock’s public-accommodation laws. The program, which aired on the local public television station, prompted the City Council to adopt anti-discrimination laws. “There were a lot of people who were mad that they were being told they couldn’t bar people from entering places of business,” Galan said. That first documentary launched Galan to a career as one of America’s most-respected independent producers. He has focused his camera lens and director’s eye on Latinos across the United States as well as in Mexico, Cuba and Central America. He has produced hundreds of documentaries or short stories on the often-overlooked role Latinos played in building the United States. “We weren’t important when people were putting up exhibits at museums,” said Galan, now 51 and living in Austin. “We were the workers, part of the hired help, and today, when we discover the contributions and impacts that Latinos had in building this country, it’s important to document it.
Finding his focus
Galan hit the documentary scene during “the Decade of the Hispanic,” when major corporations, retailers and political candidates began to notice the effect the ethnic group could have on the country. Helped by the newfound interest, he received funding from foundations and other private enterprises. He dug for anecdotes, interviewed people who witnessed historic events and unearthed rare footage thought to have been lost. “His professionalism and achievement in producing entertaining prime-time PBS programs that reach millions of people has made him a role model,” said Moctesuma Esparza, a producer of the feature film Selena and the Civil War epics Gettysburg and Of Gods and Generals. “He’s one of the few Chicanos who has attained the level of recognition as a filmmaker who continuously works on PBS, and that makes him unique. He’s a trailblazer for having been able to achieve that, knocking down the walls for others to come in.” One of Galan’s latest projects, Visiones, is scheduled to air Sunday on PBS. The six-part series looks at Latino arts and culture. Another project, for the History Channel, chronicles the historic Cinco de Mayo battle near Puebla, Mexico, where Mexican peasants defeated a superior French force in 1862. The program, which airs Saturday, examines how Cinco de Mayo celebrations were brought to the United States by people fleeing the Mexican Revolution between 1910 and 1920. It also touches on the marketing and merchandising phenomenon surrounding the date as advertisers seek to penetrate the burgeoning U.S. Latino market. By 2008, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia, Latinos will number more than 50 million, and their purchasing power will reach upwards of $1 trillion. But the battle for equality — fought so hard by young Mexican-Americans during the so-called Chicano movement that swept the Southwest in the 1960s and ’70s — continues, Galan said. “The whole Chicano movement, as we knew it, obviously is over. We just moved in different directions, including business,” he said.
An editor and humanitarian
Galan, who grew up in San Angelo, fully embraced the movement after earning his telecommunications degree at Texas Tech. His co-workers at the public broadcasting station in Lubbock didn’t look kindly on his decision. “I was called a pinko-commie, just for being part of the movement,” he said. “In the end, that experience and what happened to me at the club led to me wanting to do something that had an impact on an audience.” His program was called Aztlan. The name of the mythical birthplace of the Aztecs, Mexico’s indigenous people, Aztlan was the movement’s rallying cry. “We decided to do the program in Spanish, so that way the management didn’t know what we were saying and they couldn’t pull us off the air,” he said. Galan eventually moved to Boston to work on a new PBS program called Frontline. “What really impressed me about Hector was that he had the incredible ability to get close to people, everyday people,” said Michael Sullivan, Frontline’s executive producer. “He has the rare ability to be able to capture something in his camera and shape it in the editing room, and he has the exceptional ability of being as much a humanitarian as an editor.” By 1983, Galan was tiring of the pace of documentaries. He longed to return to Texas and to earn financial independence. He ventured out on his own. He and a camera crew followed Cuban exile Tony Guernica, who was returning to Cuba for the first time since he had left at age 10. “When I look at what Hector does, there is a great deal of feeling and humanity behind it, and, oftentimes, it gives you a deeper understanding of an issue or topic than just the facts themselves,” said Guernica, now 53 and general manager of the Univision station in Orlando, Fla. “There is a very human quality in everything that he does.” Galan said that, as he nears retirement, the time has come to be choosy about his work. He is negotiating a project on the life of San Antonio Archbishop Patrick Flores, the Catholic Church’s first Mexican-American bishop. He considers himself not only a filmmaker but a teacher and, somewhere deep inside, a radical who wanted to change the world through the stories of his people. “People ask me, ‘Why didn’t you go to Hollywood?’. I guess I could have,” he said, “but I liked doing these stories that are close to me, and when audiences see them, I see how much they love them.”
Where to watch
Two programs produced and directed by Austin’s Hector Galan are scheduled to air this weekend. * Cinco de Mayo, about the historic battle on May 5, 1862, near Puebla, Mexico, airs at 6 p.m. Saturday on the History Channel. * Visiones, a series on Latino arts and culture, airs at 9:30 p.m. Sunday on KERA/Channel 13.
Copyright 2004 Star-Telegram, Inc.
Emmy Magazine
August 1999
(Excerpt from article in Emmy on four producers of national programs)
Far Afield
By Karen Mesterton-Gibbons
Austin, Texas. Minneapolis, Minnesota. Blountstown, Florida. Kittery, Maine. Nice places to live, but seemingly inhospitable places from which to begin successful national production companies. That is, unless you have the drive and creativity of the four independent producers profiled here.
Each member of this quartet has overcome regional prejudices- including, in some cases, his or her own- to produce unique, award-winning programs for a multitude of national broadcast and cable outlets. How have they accomplished it? And now that they’ve had success, why don’t they leave for larger markets? Although, they’re reasons differ slightly, they share the same focus: they value the quality of their lives as much as the quality of their work.
The Southwest
Hector Galán
Galán Productions, Inc.
Hector Galán, forty-five, grew up in San Angelo, Texas, in a bilingual household. Luck was with him when, after high school, he applied for a job as a cameraman at the local TV station- the person doing the hiring wasn’t a local.
“I probably wouldn’t have gotten the job because I was Mexican-American, but he didn’t have those hang-ups. Once I got my foot in the door, I became a fast learner- I got the bug.”
While at Texas Tech University, he was hired by KCBD, an NBC affiliate in Lubbock, eventually becoming a news director. When he graduated, the university hired him as a producer. He created and produced Aztlan, a weekly Chicano-themed news and public affairs show, and then produced Happenings, a show for the African-American community.
Later Galán moved to Austin to work on Checking It Out, a bilingual program for Hispanic teens that aired nationally on PBS. Starting as a production assistant, he ended up as senior producer. “I was able to work with Aida Barrera, one of the first Latinas pioneering television on PBS,” he says. “She let me do a thirty-minute film on gang violence in Chicago.”
That film was seen by a group in Boston, and in 1982 Galán went to work on a documentary series just taking off on PBS- Frontline, with Jessica Savitch as anchor.
“I did the third Frontline of the first season, and I went on to do eleven of them.
Galán stayed in Boston for a couple of years, but he missed Texas and wanted to return. “I felt out of place,” he explains.
He resigned his position at Frontline in 1984 and headed back to Texas. On the way, he stopped in Washington, D.C. where the National Council of La Raza hired him to make Cuba: A Personal Journey- his first documentary as an independent. It aired as a special on PBS. Back in Austin, Galán started his company, Galán Productions, Inc., out of a bedroom in his home and began working with Frontline as an indie producer. “Sometimes I pinch myself,” he says “because it is very, very hard to sustain a company on long-form documentaries.”
For his more than twenty-five productions, which include Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement and New Harvest, Old Shame, he has won numerous awards including a CINE Golden Eagle and many festival awards.
When he started his company, Galán brought in crews from Chicago and Boston, but after a few years he identified talented locals. “I’ve hired practically everybody in town,” he says. Today he has four permanent employees and “a really good support network.”
But there’s more to the job than filmmaking. “I wear a business hat, schmoozing corporate types, attending conferences, meeting legislators, and trying to find ways into corporate American. It can take up to three years to fund a project.”
Galán also writes, directs, and occasionally edits. He is currently working on The Children of Las Colonias, an hour long, $1-million documentary funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. Intended for PBS, it examines families and children who live in dreadful conditions in U.S. communities along the Mexican border.
And he has received final funding for another documentary, Accordion Dreams, about the musical style known as conjunto.
Galán is thinking about ownership of his programs. “You may share in ancillary sales, but in the end it’s not yours,” he says. Of the films produced by series staffers.
That’s why I don’t do Frontlines anymore- they were challenging, but there were totally funded. I’m moving more into markets after broadcast, like schools and home video sales. The day that I stop learning or feel jaded, then it’s time to open my hamburger joint.”
But flipping burgers seems far on the horizon. Galán has yet another two-hour program, The Border, airing nationally on PBS in September.
“Texas is my home. I’m a Tejano,” says Galán, adding that he’s proud to raise his three children in his home state. “There are so many stories here I want to tell, so many parts of the culture that I love. That’s what’s kept me here.”
AUSTIN CHRONICLE
REEL AUSTIN STORIES
August 16, 1998
by Jerry Johnson
(Excerpt from article profiling Austin-based documentary producers)
Hector Galán. Austin’s documentary filmmaking maverick. He has run his own independent production company for 14 years, produced 35 national prime-time PBS specials (including Chicano!, Songs of the Homeland, and Vaquero: The Forgotten Cowboy), and was a founding board member of ITVS, one of the country’s leading funding sources for non-commercial documentary cinema. And he’s done it all as a Latino filmmaker who, through a shrewd business acumen and sheer force of will, has successfully fought to tell traditionally underrepresented stories the way he wants to tell them. “I have a passion for particular subject matter that’s close to my heart - ‘that’ being I’m Latino,” Galán explains. “A lot of these stories that I’ve been involved in would have otherwise never gotten made, or certainly not had the perspective that I can bring to this material because I’m close to it. You also bring the craft to the material, what the mentors have taught you, and by combining all of these elements into the piece, you end up with a wonderful film that becomes part of the national record. These projects are evergreens: They can air forever.”
Galán began operating from Austin during a time, in 1984, when there was no local documentary scene. As Richard Lewis remembers, “There were many years during which commercially viable documentary began with Hector, and ended with Hector.” In fact, during those early years the production talent in the area was so sparse that Galán was forced to fly in crews from Boston or Chicago to work on his films, but doing so became too difficult and expensive, and he soon began to search for an alternative. “I decided to start developing local people; giving them a shot and just working with them. And there was an attitude by people in Boston and New York toward us, almost condescending, about whether we could meet their technical specs. Of course, we not only met their specs - we went beyond what they ever anticipated.” The list of now-successful filmmakers who worked for him early in their careers is stunning: Vance Holmes, Tom Taylor, Henry Miller, Lee Daniel, Clark Walker, Paige Martinez, Susanne Mason, and more. So you thought there was only one film university in town? Welcome to U. of Galán.
‘Pocho’ Patchwork
AFs’s Texas Doc Tour brings the formidable Héctor Galán and his “Visiones’ to One World Theatre
AUSTIN CHRONICLE- September 2003
BY ANNE S. LEWIS
Come on out to the One World Theatre for a sneak peek at Héctor Galán’s next epic project — Visiones — a terrific odyssey through the patchwork quilt of Latino culture in the U.S. of A. Galán has been dubbed the “Hispanic Ken Burns” for his many PBS-broadcast films on wide-ranging issues involving the country’s Latino population, including Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement (1996). He’ll screen 10 segments (about 70 minutes) of Visiones, as a work-in-progress that, when completed, will be broadcast as a three-hour PBS special sometime next year.
Be prepared to fill some gaps in your knowledge of the roots of familiar Latino contributions to the American culture scene, music being one of the more obvious ones. Visiones has segments on the Cuban “Miami Sound” and Lalo Guerrero, one of the fathers, in the Forties, of Chicano music of the Southwest. There’s also a segment on prolific indie filmmaker Willie Varela. Then there are artists in Latino communities from coast-to-coast who are doing things creative, outré or mainstream, that chances are you’re unfamiliar with: Ever heard of Rokafella, the New York hip-hop dancer? Or Evelyn Cisneros, prima ballerina with the San Francisco Ballet? “We’re so narrow in our thinking,” says Galán. “As a Chicano in the Southwest, for instance, I see the world in a particular way — my relationships to Anglos and my place here, but, of course, the Puerto Rican experience in New York or the Cuban exile experience in Miami is totally different.”
La carpa, meaning “tent,” is a little-known but fascinating form of traveling theatrical entertainment that began in the Twenties and spanned more than 30 years. La Carpa Garcia, profiled in a Visiones segment with interviews from surviving members as well as terrific archival photography, is historically hailed as one of the more popular and long-standing Mexican tent shows from this era. This group traveled and performed in California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas, eventually settling in San Antonio. “Carpa was early vaudeville,” explains Galán. “They did circus, comedy, drama, Greek tragedy, and parody — which was probably one of their most important roles, because, for many, they were the source of news of what was going on in the world.”
The Carpa segment features UT drama department playwright Amparo Garcia-Crow, who is developing a musical production called La Carpa Garcia because she finds carpa an excellent vehicle for filling the vacuum of meaningful Latino acting roles for students, as well as for fleshing out and portraying realistically — warts and all — significant, if less well-known, characters in Latino history. One such historical figure portrayed in Garcia-Crow’s Carpa production is Chicano lawyer Gus Garcia, the first Latino to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, whose stellar career as an advocate was cut short by his alcoholism.
Then there’s the widely syndicated Latino cartoonist Lalo Lopez Alcaraz. The guy who takes a lot of heat from Latinos because he tells it like it is, pulling no punches. He’s got a Web site called Pocho.com, pocho being the derogatory term that Mexican nationals often fling at Mexican-Americans for leaving their native country. “Alcaraz represents people like me,” laughs Galán, “people who have been criticized for decades as squatters in this country, those who have created their own art, their own language, like Chicanese. To a lot of people, being called a pocho is an insult, but Alcaraz took this idea of pochismo and made it something to be proud of.”
To assemble Visiones’ vast cultural mosaic, Galán worked closely with the National Association of Latino Art and Culture and then Latino producers all over the country, developing the stories that would make it into the final cut. As executive producer, he then sent out a single production crew of three to each venue, crisscrossing the country in a van to film the segments. “For me, it was a great learning experience to bring this together,” says Galán, “because, while Latinos in this country share a lot — a language and a lot of traditions — there are a lot of differences; we’re not homogenous, even though a lot of people tend to think of ‘Latino’ as a big umbrella.” end story
Segments of Visiones: Latino Art and Culture screen as part of the Texas Documentary Tour on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 7pm, at One World Theatre (7701 Bee Caves Rd.). Héctor Galán will conduct a Q&A after the screening. Tickets — $6 for current Austin Film Society members and new members joining before the screening, as well as students; $8 for nonmembers — are available only through One World Theatre (329-6753) by phone or at the venue one hour prior to screening. For more information, check www.austinfilm.org.
Hector Galán- The Documentary Craft
AUSTIN CHRONICLE
by Marc Savlov
At age 44, Hector Galán may not yet fall under the “Elder Statesman of Documentary Filmmaking” heading, but he’s on the verge. Since 1972, when he joined the San Angelo CBS affiliate straight out of high school, this inspired and inspiring Texan has created some of the best documentaries around. Starting with 1978’s Disco Discrimination — which focused on the problems young Latinos encountered in the nearly all-white discotheques of Lubbock — Galán has turned out a steady stream of well over 30 pieces, many for the acclaimed PBS series Frontline. In 1984, needing to get out on his own and away from the rigors of Boston and WGBH (where Frontline is created), he formed Galán Productions here in Austin and immediately began production on such noted films as The Hunt for Pancho Villa, Songs of the Homeland, and the acclaimed, five-part Chicano! series. Now, as part of the Texas Documentary Tour film series (co-sponsored by the Austin Film Society, the UT Film Department, SXSW Film, and The Austin Chronicle), Galán will be screening and answering questions about his explosive 1989 Frontline segment Shakedown in Santa Fe, a harrowing glimpse inside the walls of the Santa Fe Maximum Security Prison.
I met with the amiable and animated filmmaker at the West Austin offices of Galán Productions, and spoke with him about his life and work to date.
Austin Chronicle: Can you fill me in a little on how you got started in documentary filmmaking?
Hector Galán: The executive producer of Frontline, David Fanning, brought me up to Boston, and I started working there with Jessica Savitch. I worked up there for a couple of years, and at that point I really had the independent bug, I wanted to go independent, so I just took off. Boston is great, but I like it here, you know? I like scorpions.
I came back and started the company [Galán Productions] in 1984 here in Austin, and worked in documentaries exclusively ever since. In long-form, we’ve produced about 30 films. We’ve practically employed everybody in town. Last year, we had 35 people working for us — everybody that I could get my hands on.
A lot of folks who have gone on to become real successful in terms of TV have worked with me in the past, here in town. I’m still at it, I think it’s amazing that I’ve been able to survive since 1984 in the documentary genre. It’s a closed field. It’s very hard to get in. It’s very hard to get money. A lot of people know each other in the industry, but I actually went along for a number of years without anybody knowing I was here in Austin. I did that primarily because I was involved in a lot of news and public affairs programming — I didn’t want people to find me, because I wasn’t protected. You know, some people don’t like what you do, they get angry. I did a piece in Arkansas, I was in Little Rock for a long time right when Clinton was taking off, and he didn’t like this piece that I did. It was a show called Who Cares About Children?, and basically, it was looking at the whole troubled foster care system in the state of Arkansas. Ironically, last year I was invited to the White House [to screen his PBS series Chicano!]. I thought I was going to get kicked out when Clinton saw me, because he must have known. Maybe not. Who knows?
AC: Frontline is such a great outlet for documentaries. How was it working for them?
HG: Well, Frontline is the only hour-long long-form national news and public affairs series that’s there on an ongoing basis. These films, you don’t find these films on network television. Maybe HBO does some, but HBO has a real strong entertainment value to it. Their rules are sex, violence, and crime, and of course that’s what sells. But they may push it a little too much, I think. Frontline deals with the policy aspects as well, and that may not sound sexy, but it’s important. And that’s what PBS really does best. The support really isn’t always there, however. I think the stations are scared of Frontline sometimes, and I think they don’t really want it. They want Lawrence Welk and things like that. Frontline gets in trouble. But that’s what we’re supposed to do. It’s PBS — it’s supposed to be shielded from advertiser interests, so that you can talk about these sorts of things.
AC: Shakedown in Santa Fe originally aired on Frontline, right? How did that come about and what can viewers expect from the film?
HG: Right, that aired on Frontline about nine years ago, but through my career I can pick maybe four or five that are my favorites, and this is one of them. I don’t think that a film like this could air again, nationally, because it was pretty risqué for its time, mainly because of the language and the violence that’s involved.
What’s interesting about this film is that it’s a process film. It’s one of these vérité films that, when you plant yourself inside of a prison for a month, things are going to happen. And they happened. And I was there. And the camera was there. So, it’s a day in the life of a maximum security prison and the power struggles within that environment. It’s like its own community.
AC: Why the Santa Fe setting?
HG: The reason I picked the Santa Fe Maximum Security Prison was that it was the scene of one of the most violent prison uprisings that has ever happened. That was in 1980, when prisoners literally took over the prison. The death and mayhem and destruction was just unbelievable. It hadn’t been seen before. What happened was that the prisoners completely revolted because of maltreatment and abuses by the guards and took hostages and the killing began. None of the guards died, but they were all horribly brutalized. If you can imagine severing somebody’s head and putting it on a stick and then going up to a prison guard and saying, “This is what is going to happen to you.” I mean, it does something to you psychologically. Those guards were never the same after that.
The question that we raise in the documentary is: “Is it safer now that we’ve had this prison reform, or has it gone too far?” And, eventually, we answer that, but throughout the course of the piece, there are these characters that we get to know. The jailers, the prisoners — it was very interesting to get in there and get closer to some of the people in the white gangs, because I am a minority.
AC: How’d you swing that?
HG: When I first met with them, they told me they would talk but not about what I wanted to talk about, which was the riot. Eventually, though, as we got to know each other, they realized that they did have a story to tell, and I was there, so I featured one of those convicts in the film. Eventually, they came around and opened up.
AC: Has funding for these projects been tough to come by? It’s hard enough securing funding for mainstream films. Are documentaries that much harder to get off the ground?
HG: I was part of a golden age of major federal lovefest funding, and there really was a commitment, even earlier in the Eighties when the Department of Education was really trying to create this multicultural presence in media by funding programs and bringing in the historically under-served audiences, people who had not had the power to create their own reflection of their community and society. And that’s still happening today. Even now, you can look at network television and hardly ever see a Hispanic face there. Something’s wrong.
Something that is a reality and something that is changing is the fact that Hispanics are growing in incredible numbers. Once you start looking at a $350 billion consumer market, and the loyalty of that market, and trying to reach that market in economic terms, then you’ll have an impact. That’s the only time it’s going to change.
People like me, in the documentary world, other emerging filmmakers creating their own stamp, will bring more and more of these films to fruition.
AC: What about your minority status? Has that helped or hindered your filmmaking?
HG: A lot of times, they try to make you more of a minority than you are. I, for instance, would never be the minority producer or the minority that does just the minority stuff. On the other hand, a lot of the work that I do, there’s this incredible void in terms of the long-form documentary, capturing history, and telling stories that are important to tell; stories that I, as a Mexican-American, Chicano, Latino, whatever, can tell. I want to do these stories because I want to do them, not because I have to do them. So there’s a real fine line there in terms of do you do only minority films or do you do all films? I happen to want to do stories that I feel need to be told. Otherwise there’s no point.
AC: Here’s a twofold question for you: What’s your goal as a documentary filmmaker, and what’s your goal as a Hispanic documentary filmmaker? Is there a difference there?
HG: That’s really not a twofold question at all, it’s one question, because, yes, I did do documentaries on African-Americans; I’ve done documentaries on Anglos, Cubans, you name it. I’ve done it all simply for the craft, because I believe in the craft of documentary filmmaking. I think that these are stories that in many ways are more powerful than fictional films, because these are real stories, real people. For years we’ve heard of the death of the documentary form, we’ve been told that they’re going to disappear, but it seems like now, with so many channels to fill on television, that the documentary film is re-emerging big time. And they’ve never really gone away.
Simply working in that area — in documentary filmmaking — is challenging and exciting. It really is, and that’s why I’m still doing it after all these years. I always learn something, whether it be in editing, or new shooting styles, or collaborating with someone.
As a Hispanic documentary filmmaker, I have a real strong interest in capturing history that hasn’t been told. For instance, when I was growing up I’d see Acapulco Reds, Bandito caricatures, and all this stuff about Pancho Villa, and so when I had an opportunity to create an impact, I did a film on Pancho Villa for the American audience as part of PBS’ The American Experience. It was called The Hunt for Pancho Villa, and that allowed me to talk about that history so that people could have an understanding of why this guy practically went to war with Mexico, with 200,000 troops stationed on the border and with General “Black Jack” Pershing going in looking for this guy to kill him… somehow that disappears into history, and I want to bring that back. Stories of the Southwest, stories of Mexican-Americans, there are all these wonderful stories that need to be told.
I know that a television show isn’t going to change the world, but it can give you a glimpse. An insider’s glimpse. And I think that’s very important.
Shakedown in Santa Fe screens as part of the Texas Documentary Tour on Wednesday, October 8, 7pm (doors open at 6:30pm), at the Alamo Drafthouse & Cinema (409 Colorado). Hector Galán will introduce the film and hold a Q&A session afterwards.
THE TEXAS OBSERVER
Accordions Live Again
at La Villita
By Melissa Sattley
Accordion Dreams
Directed by Hector Galán
San Benito-Austin-based documentary filmmaker Hector Galán couldn’t have picked a better backdrop than the historic La Villita dancehall and the Rio Grande Valley-birthplace of conjunto music-to present Accordion Dreams, his latest documentary. The film traces the arc of conjunto’s history from the early legends of the 1930s to the innovative young musicians who are keeping the art form alive today. In its heyday, from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s, La Villita was the heart of conjunto music in the Rio Grande Valley, the place to hear squeezebox super-stars Valerio Longoria, Narciso Martinez (”El Huracán del Valle”), and Santiago Jimenez. In the late ’70s the dancehall closed because of dwindling audiences and economic decline in the neighborhood. Now city officials want to rehab the building and turn it into a conjunto museum. But on the night of the Valley premier, La Villita’s deceased owner, Don Fernando Sanchez, seemed to be playing a practical joke. An hour before the film was supposed to begin, the power went out in half of San Benito, including La Villita. “Don Fernando turned the power off because the dance floor is too small,” an elderly audience member confided to her friend.
City officials quickly pulled out their cell phones. Galán and his wife, Evy Ledesma, lit luminarias on the sidewalk to prove to hundreds of conjunto fans-many of whom had driven from as far away as Houston and Dallas-that the show would go on. Across the street, cantina regulars carried their drinks out to the sidewalk and wondered aloud about all of the commotion at the old dancehall. Out front, conjunto fans in their sixties and seventies waxed nostalgic about La Villita and the days when they could hear hits like Valerio Longoria’s “El Rosalito” from blocks away, long before they reached the dancehall. San Benito native Manuel Gonzalez, 65, had driven about 300 miles, all the way from Buda, to witness La Villita’s brief revival. “This brings back so many memories,” he said, recalling his days at La Villita in the 1950s. “You would work all week and on the weekends this place was it-you couldn’t believe the musicians you could see here.”
In little less than a half hour, the city’s fire department provided a generator for the film projector and emergency lights to illuminate the dance floor. Even more miraculously, the film started on time at 8:00 p.m.-unusual even in normal circumstances for the Valley.
The documentary film, second in a planned trilogy on the history of Tejano music, follows the travels of the three-row button accordion from its arrival in central Texas with German and Czech immigrants in the early 19th century. The catchy polkas caught the ear of Texas Mexicans, or Tejanos, in the Rio Grande Valley. They adapted the polka into conjunto-the Tejano’s working man blues-a blending of accordion, bajo sexto (12-string guitar), and drums.
Accordion Dreams intermixes the biographies of legendary performers such as Narciso Martinez and Flaco Jimenez (probably the most familiar crossover performer to those not well versed in the music), with footage of live performances by present-day favorites such as Benny Layton and Ruben Vela. Galán then takes a detour to the small, central Texas town of New Braunfels, where Texans of German descent still play the traditional polkas and waltzes that intrigued Tejanos in the last century. But traditional accordion music is slowly dying out among people of German descent in Texas, and now is only occasionally played in retirement communities and at church parties. “Accordion music is being lost throughout the United States and Europe,” Galán explained before the film’s premiere. “There are only small pockets where the traditional music is surviving in places like Louisiana and Texas.”
Austin singer-songwriter Tish Hinojosa narrates the hour-long documentary and Kathy Ragland, a New York-based ethnomusicologist, provides a historical perspective. Conjunto historians, including Amadeo Flores, 68, an accordionist who played with legendary players like Valerio Longoria and Tony de la Rosa, add personal perspectives on the music’s social and cultural roles in the Mexican-American community. From the opening scene, Galán emphasizes that conjunto is still very much alive among music fans. The film begins with 17-year-old Jesse Turner of the small Valley town of Santa Rosa, playing at a high school dance with his band, Estilo. Now 23, Turner is just one of many young accordionists who have taken conjunto, added some rock ‘n’ roll twists and slick dance moves, and made the music more accessible to a younger audience. At the high school dance in Accordion Dreams, the young girls go wild at Turner’s pelvic thrusts and skittering feet. Suddenly the accordion is sexy, and conjunto is no longer just your grandparents’ music-something to be shunned at all costs.
“When I was a kid accordion music was embarrassing,” Ledesma, a Harlingen native, told me. “I’m 41. I grew up in the ’70s and we were into rock ‘n’ roll music in English and trying to fit into the larger culture. Now these kids are into conjunto and they’ve found a way to be true to their own culture and still be Americans.” In the film, older conjunto musicians like Amadeo Flores are pleased that the younger generation has taken an interest in the music. “We teach them and they teach us,” says Flores, of the new conjunto players. “In the old days we played, stopped then sang. Now they do everything all at once.”
Refreshingly, Galán also focuses on the struggle of women pioneers in conjunto music. Eva Ibarra, now in her late ’50s, rips it up in an impromptu performance, as Hinojosa narrates the difficulties Ibarra faced when she was the only woman in a macho musical world. Ibarra started playing conjunto accordion at six; her father would book her in dancehalls around South Texas as a novelty act. As she grew older, however, she was often criticized for playing conjunto accordion, which was viewed as being strictly for men. The bars and nightclubs where she played were considered unseemly for a woman, but Ibarra ignored the naysayers and continued to make records and perform. Today she plays and tours with Hinojosa in the all-woman group, Las Super Tejanas. In Accordion Dreams, musicians Cecilia Saenz, 17, and Victoria Galvan, 15, show that attitudes have progressed greatly since Ibarra was their age, and that conjunto has finally opened up as a viable avenue for young women performers.
Hector Galán is a San Angelo native who has deep roots in the Rio Grande Valley. For decades, he’s focused his lens on the Texas-Mexico border. The first film in his music documentary trilogy, Songs of the Homeland, which won the Top Juror Award at CineFestival in San Antonio in 1995, also focused on the border. Another documentary, The Forgotten Americans, which aired on PBS last fall, portrayed the plight of poverty-stricken families along the border. (Accordion Dreams will also be picked up by PBS, and is slated to air in September.) At first it can be difficult to explain the importance of conjunto to people outside of the border region, says Galán. “People in Washington, D.C. and New York are like, ‘What’s conjunto?’” he says wryly. “It’s the cultural legacy of this region and a significant contribution to American music-even if it is in Spanish.”
At the Valley premier it was obvious that conjunto meant so much more to the audience. The event had an intimate family feel, and there were murmurs of recognition as black-and-white photos of musicians from yesteryear appeared on screen. Older audience members laughed at old dancehall photos and at the outfits and hairstyles that seemed hopelessly outdated. After the premier, several musicians featured in the film performed on La Villita’s stage-the same stage where accordionist Amadeo Flores performed more than 50 years ago. “Back then the dancehall didn’t have a roof,” he recalled. “I remember one night it rained and everyone kept dancing; they didn’t care.” (The roof was added in the late ’60s to make La Villita more comfortable for receptions and weddings, much to the dismay of Flores, who thinks it affects the quality of the sound.)
For Jesse Turner, playing there at the Valley premier with some of the legends of conjunto music was an opportunity to pay homage to his heroes and to his father, a lifelong conjunto fan. But once again, Don Fernando seemed to be playing tricks. The night of the premier Turner had a bad cold and said he wouldn’t sing. But as he launched into his second song and couples began to hit the dance floor, he was carried away by the evening and changed his mind. “I couldn’t help it,” he later explained. “It’s an honor to be here.”
Melissa Sattley is a reporter at The Monitor in McAllen. Flaco Jimenez, Ruben Vela and other accordion wizards can also be heard at the Tejano Conjunto Festival in San Antonio, May 9-13.
MASS COMMUNICATION ALUMNI HONORED
By MATTHEW HENRY
Avalanche-Journal
Bill Dean, executive vice president of the Ex-Students Association, is among four people scheduled to receive an Outstanding Alumni Award from the Texas Tech School of Mass Communications today.
During a homecoming scholarship breakfast in the Merket Alumni Center, the school will honor Dean, an associate professor of mass communications; Hector Galan, owner of Galan Productions in Austin and producer of PBS’ “Front Line”; Mary Lou Kromer, vice president of corporate communications and investor relations at W.R. Grace & Co., in Boca Raton, Fla.; and Col. Virginia Pribyla, head of media relations for the Secretary of Air Force in Washington, D.C.
Breakfast profits will go toward a scholarship endowed by the Lubbock Area Mass Communications Alumni Council.
Dean earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing, master’s administration degree and doctorate in secondary education from Tech. He then worked at Lubbock and Coronado high schools before joining Tech’s mass communications school.
He became director of student publications at Tech in 1967 and director of the Ex-Students Association 10 years later.
Galan received a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications from Tech in 1974. He’s worked in television for nearly 25 years, including an early job as news director of KCBD-TV. “Hispanic Business” recently named him one of the 100 most influential Hispanics in America.
He founded Galan Productions in 1984 and has produced numerous programs for PBS’ award-winning “Frontline” series. In 1996 he completed “Chicano! The History of the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement” for PBS. He was invited to the White House for a private screening of the documentary.
Kromer graduated from Tech in 1975 with a journalism degree. She’s now finishing a master’s degree in business administration at the University of Miami.
Kromer worked as a legislative assistant and press secretary for former U.S. Rep. James M. Collins. She also directed public relations at Rockwell International before joining her current firm.
Pribyla left Tech with a journalism degree in 1974 for the Air Force. She was commissioned as a second lieutenant through the Reserve Officer Training Corps program. Her assignments have included directing public affairs for the munitions systems division of Eglin Air Force Base in Florida and heading media relations at the Air Force’s European headquarters at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
Pribyla also earned a master’s degree in communication from the University of Oklahoma. The Air Force has showered her with medals, including the Meritorious Service Medal, Joint Service Commendation Medal and the Air Force Achievement Medal.
Page created 10/11/97 1:26 AM
Copyright 1997 Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Some material copyright 1997 The Associated Press.
narrated by singer/songwriter Tish Hinojosa, and is presented to PBS by Latino Public Broadcasting in Los Angeles.
From lively polkas to smooth waltzes, Accordion Dreams captures an exhilarating musical style that is rapidly gaining fans worldwide. This program looks at today’s young rebel accordionists who have expanded this musical style to the fringes of rock, blues, and pop, while paying homage to its pioneers.