Vinyl Border: Record Store that resurrences the lost wave Valle del Río Grande | Entertainment in the United States

This article has been published together COLLABORATIVE BRIDGE MESSAGE in connection with Country. Puente News cooperation is devoted to information, organization and financing quality reports and informative strictness focused on the border between the United States and Mexico.

Half -20. In the 18th century, the border area of ​​the southern Texas became an epicenter of several musical styles that were influential and international.

Records such as Falcon Records, in the McALlen agricultural community and the music company Rio Grande in San Benito – Hometown Freddy Fender, Legend of Texan Music – pulled out vinyl genres that mixed the music styles of the whole Mexico with the styles of local artists and European immigrants.

There the Tejano set flourished, small groups in which the buttons, accordion, Central Europe and the lower sixth, popular string tool in Mexico, which provides a low line. Texan orchestras have appeared, larger groups that include wind sections. And northern roots, a mixture of genres with a greater importance of bass and drums.

This music scene of the southern end of Texas and the Mexican state Tamaulipas, which the Mexican and Texan peasants expanded both countries, was immortalized in the film Documentary Driver Les Blank from 1976 and nature of music Chris Strachwitz, “” “”Coole.

At that time, vinyl records began to fall out of kindness. The original recordings of culturally important musicians disappeared to end up in garages and fads.

In recent years, however, Vinyl has regained popularity. This phenomenon coincided with greater interest in regional artists who have never indicated nationwide. Records throughout the United States, partially driven by fans of hip hop who are looking for small -known groups of souls that sample DJ and producers have found in the last decade the re -release market in vinyl recordings that were popular only in a particular city or region. This demand has spread to other genres such as Earth and Rock. The unmistakable sound of the Western sound of San Antonio, 200 miles north, addresses a new audience.

But this rebirth of regional sounds has not reached the Rio Grande valley, where the border river is ventilated between orchards, onion fields and suburban expansion before led to the Gulf of Mexico. However, several young people living in this region are trying to change this situation.

In 2010, Isaac Herrera and Zach Myers realized that they need to make trips for several hours from the valley to feed their love for collecting vinyl. It wasn’t great, they said they had a recording store near home and specialized in cross music so influential that he was born exactly in the region where they lived?

In other parts of the state – in San Antonio and even in a small Kingsville, in Ranchera two hours by car from border communities where these genres flourished – lifelong record shops were promoted by Texan and Northern Music and organized performances in shops and autograph meetings for fans.

So Herrera and Myers began to look at markets and tracks and bought whole collections. They found a press on the first LPS SuperStar, such as Ramón Ayala, the inhabitants of the valley and the 7 -inch singles of foreigners, such as Johnny Jay and Pompador, which were influenced by popular groups of 60, but maintained the sound from South Texas.

In 2023, after several years of pop -up sales, two friends, along with his wives, Jade Herrera and Rebecca Myers, Pharr opened records in the historic building in this city with 80,000 inhabitants.

It is a small and proper shop with murals and the theme of the valley on the wall. At the top of the boxes are exposed to generally recognized classics, such as “Sub Day My Prince” Miles Davis, and Santos Graials, such as “Fire of Love” by Gun Club, along with unaffected recordings, often find it difficult to find, regional stars such as Ayala and Fender.

Take a look at the selection of staff or ask for sections of complex, northern and Texans, carefully selected, the owners will be illuminated by their eyes. They direct customers to small -known groups, such as puppies, or popular critics that have never succeeded, such as the virtuous accordionist Esteban Jordan, who mixed his music of various genres, including jazz. Pharr Out owners say these artists deserve recognition as Sunny Ozuna, a Mexican-American symbol singer West Sound Sound, influenced by the Tejan orchestra, whose copy of Big Crown Records, from New York, can be found in shops across the country.

“We have everything new,” says Herrera. “We have Taylor Swift and The Weeknd. But there is regional music emphasis. When someone comes and says,” Eh, Uncle, do you have something from Ramon Ayaly?

“We wanted the prevailing problem to be in the background instead of something in the background, at the bottom of the area,” adds Myers. “We want our name and our brand to be associated with the music and culture of the place where we live.”

Some influential musicians of the valley have become extremely popular. Gilbert Reyes JR says his parents, who were daily workers, saw a concert of the first Ayaly group, northern lights, in Bakersfield in California, in 1967. But Reyes, who is now the director of the German accordion manufacturer Hohner, says that in southern Texas, at the time of segregation, these artists were associated with a higher generation.

“The children did not want to listen to this music because they were ashamed that their parents were daily workers and work in cotton fields or anything,” says Reyes. “I wasn’t part of the dominant stream. When I went to the Institute, he didn’t let us speak Spanish or listen to Mexican music.”

It may seem contradictory, but having music in showing the store will appeal to a new audience. It is discovered or, as is usually, redearmed by occasional buyers or vinyl fans in general who see and enter it. Collectors of styles that Pharr Out are presenting on the purpose of trade and musicians whose albums sell, walking from time to time.

“It is nice to have these shops that are as a review of our history,” says Juan Tejeda, protector of cultural art in San Antonio, who founded a common Texan festival Cultural Arts Center in Guadalupe more than 40 years ago. “Like our cultural art centers, they maintain our history, our language, art and teach them to our community … They are important repositories and promoters of our culture.”

The fact that music is for sale in vinyl also gives it a cultural and trendy value that museums or cultural centers.

In Janie’s Record Shop, the entire San Antonio institution, where the shop was opened to the public for 40 years, often hosts a context menu music performance, customers “want to see album records, want to know who the bassist is,” says Roberto Esparza, one of the owners. In the last 15 years, after decades of sellers almost exclusively CDs, vinyl was again the best product.

“When you hold them, it’s like having part of your own history in your hand,” Esparza explains.

“You are missing all this with streaming,” says Rae Cabello, who describes himself as “collector of obsession collector to collect music from South Texas” and a number producer. “You can skip songs. You can’t do it in cleaning. You are forced to listen to your face and face B as a whole.”

The number is part of this new generation of record stamps that re -release LPS and vinyl singles forgotten regional artists, as well as Arhoolie Records, Strachwitz, in the 1960s, seventy and eighty.

The valley also changed. This area of ​​4,300 square miles and four regions switched from becoming a set of small agricultural cities to become the core of the population of more than a million inhabitants. Reyes states that the regional culture that its generation considered anodin now finds its echo among the youngest inhabitants. The whole music learns in institutions. The local group Grupo Frontera, which mixes different genres and in which the accordion stands out, has achieved global fame.

“There’s a national pride, the rediscovery of its roots,” says Cabello. “People want tangible products and music made by people like them.”

But only a few pioneers from music in South Texas and Northern Mexico have seen their albums re -released: Chalino Sánchez, balladist of the West Coast of Mexico, whose repertoire included El Norteño, and Ozuna is two remarkable examples.

This means that Pharr Out owners sometimes find that their role of historically relevant music storage is contrary to the management of the company. In the autumn of 2024 they found a collection of ancient albums Ayaly without opening. They put one of them $ 200 and joked that it was “a price that means we don’t want to sell”.

“These are things we would rather stay for a long time,” says Herrera.

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Jason Buch He is a freelance reporter based in Texas. He was born in this state and covered the border since 2007 and wrote over all kinds of problems, from washing money to Caimanes del Río Grande. @jlbuch

Michael Gonzalez There is a freelance photojournalist based in his native region in southern Texas, next to the border between the United States and Mexico. It travels all over the state and covers the environmental stories, immigration and problems that make up life on the border. @Michael.gonzlz

Dudley Althaus He informed about Mexico, Latin America and other countries for more than three decades as a press correspondent. He started his career in a small border newspaper between Texas and Mexico and 22 years old he was an editor of Mexico City Office of Houston Chronicle and won prizes for his work. After four years, as a correspondent in Mexico for Wall Street Journal, Althaus covered the problems of immigration and borders such as freelance in San Antonio for Hearst Newspapers. He has been covering all Mexican presidential elections since 1988, when the Mexican turbulent transition to democracy began. @dqalthaus