Flaco Jimenez on How Mexico Learned to Polka NPR.org
go to original March 12, 2015

Legendary norteño group Los Alegres de Terán, in a promotional still from the 1976 documentary Chulas Fronteras. (The Arhoolie Foundation Frontera Archive/UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press)

A casual listener would be forgiven for not knowing one kind of accordion music from another. But where two cultures in particular are concerned, the similarity comes with a century-old backstory involving immigration and imitation.

On the 76th birthday of Flaco Jimenez — one of the instrument's most celebrated living players — Morning Edition asks how the accordion-heavy folk music of northern Mexico came to sound so much like the polkas and waltzes of Eastern Europe. Hear the conversation, featuring Felix Contreras of NPR's Alt.Latino and Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records, above.

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