Photo: Fred Zimmerle and Narciso Martinez | photo via www.alrendon.com/
Latin Roots is World Cafe‘s periodic in-depth look at the traditional music of Latin countries and their place in contemporary genres. On this special edition, KRVS’s Diego Martin Perez, host of La Vellonera on the Lafayette radio station, discusses the cross-section of cajun, zydeco and Latin music revolving around the accordion:
I have two songs that when I hear them, I think of my accordion playing friends here in Lafayette. It’s like ‘Oh man, he would love this song, I hope he’s tuning in so he can appreciate how this guy, who’s probably never even been to Colombia, never been to the Dominican Republic or Mexico, they have so much in common with the songs that he knows.’
And I picked one song by Narciso Martinez, he lived in the border area near Marcalo, TX, just across the border. He was influenced by the Czechoslovakian musicians, the German musicians that were living in Texas. Just like in Louisiana there’s a big gumbo, so to speak, of cultures being represented. And I just heard this song and it just sounds like a rag, like you hear in the old time fiddle tune repertoire and you hear some of that in the accordion repertoire and cajun music, and I found this kind of quick one step rag called “El Realito”…. It’s just instrumental, it’s just accordion and guitar but it’s rocking.
Listen to segment here and check out Perez’s full Spotify playlist below.