Fuego d'Amor: A When You Awake Mixtape

American roots music has a Latin dimension that the Americana genre conversation has historically underrepresented. The Spanish influence in the music of Texas, California, and the Southwest is structural rather than decorative: chord movements, melodic shapes, rhythmic patterns, and a specific quality of romantic longing that comes from the corrido tradition rather than from Nashville.

This mixtape follows that thread.

The border music tradition

Tex-Mex is the most recognized form. The accordion in Tex-Mex music comes from German immigrant communities in central Texas, passed to Mexican-American musicians who combined it with the corrido and ranchera forms they already knew. The result is a music that is neither European nor traditionally Mexican nor American country but something that belongs to the borderlands.

The Flaco Jiménez tradition is central. So is the norteño style. So are the artists who moved between the Spanish-language and English-language music worlds without making it look like a translation.

California and the Latin influence

The California country-rock that emerged from Los Angeles in the late 1960s and early 1970s — the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, the Flying Burrito Brothers — had a Latin dimension that is less discussed. The Mexican influence in Southern California musical culture is continuous and deep. Ronstadt's return to her father's music on Canciones de Mi Padre in 1987 was not a departure from her Americana work. It was a clarification of one of its sources.

The listening sequence

This mix moves through the tradition from border music to California country-rock to contemporary Americana acts that carry the Latin thread. It is not a comprehensive survey. It is a sequence of moments when the Latin roots of American music become audible.

Related: Bruce Springsteen Goes Twang for the broader roots context. Full Mixtapes index.