Max Baca, this week’s guest on Viva Tejano, is a true standard-bearer in tejano music. He was just seven years old when he started playing onstage with his dad’s conjunto band. He went on to play in the Texas Tornados, where he replaced his idol, Oscar Tellez, on the bajo sexto and later founded the Grammy Award–winning band Los Texmaniacs.
Max is also an expert on the history of the music, and in this episode, he’ll share the fascinating origins of conjunto, from South Texas and Mexico, as well as Indigenous communities in New Mexico and Arizona. And he’ll also tell the story of his first glimpse of Flaco Jiménez playing accordion fifty years ago in a massive dance hall and livestock arena in Lubbock.
Viva Tejano is produced by Ella Kopeikin and Patrick Michels and produced and engineered by Brian Standefer. Our executive producer is Megan Creydt. Additional production is by Aisling Ayers. Consulting producer is Adrian Arredondo. Graphic design is by Jenn Hair Tompkins and Victoria Millner.
Thanks to our partners, Myrna Perez and Adrian Arredondo, for access to The Johnny Canales Show archives; keep an eye out for the upcoming documentary Take It Away, which chronicles the rise and fall of tejano Hollywood.
Transcript
J. B. Sauceda (voice-over): Hey, and welcome to another episode of Viva Tejano, a Texas Monthly podcast about tejano music, told by the people who make it and live it. I’m your host, J. B. Sauceda.
This week, I sat down in the studio with Max Baca.
Max is a true standard-bearer in tejano music, a tremendously talented bajo sexto player who was just seven years old when he started playing onstage with his dad’s conjunto band. Max went on to play in the Texas Tornados alongside Freddy Fender, Flaco Jiménez, Doug Sahm and Augie Meyers, then founded the Grammy Award–winning band Los Texmaniacs. He’s recorded with the Rolling Stones and still tours with the legendary Flaco Jiménez, who he considers a second father. In 2024 Max became the youngest person ever inducted into the Texas Conjunto Music Hall of Fame in San Benito, Texas.
Max is also a real student of the music, so in our conversation you’ll hear the fascinating origin story of conjunto, from South Texas and Mexico, but also from Indigenous communities in New Mexico and Arizona. He’ll talk about the first time he saw Flaco play accordion fifty years ago in a massive dance hall and livestock arena in Lubbock. Then he’ll tell the wild story of how he came to join the world’s biggest tejano supergroup by replacing his idol, Oscar Tellez.
Here’s my conversation with Max Baca.
J. B. Sauceda: So we’re here today to talk about Johnny Canales. As kind of a jumping-off point, because I have this kind of idea in my head that he has been this glue that has really pulled together a lot of different pieces of the larger Latino music genre and has helped build this flywheel that I feel like it’s benefiting from these days. But that’s my take. That’s how I feel. But how do you . . . what did his show mean to you?
Max Baca: If you were a musician, especially in the conjunto or tejano, being on Johnny Canales was huge. It’s huge. Because there was other shows and other programs before Johnny Canales and during his time, but Johnny, he took it to another level. He was syndicated . . . I had the honor to meet him several times. The first time, he did a show in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when I was a teenager, and me and my brother had our conjunto, the Baca Brothers, Hermanos Baca. And then he invited us along with Little Joe, La Familia.
That was the first time, and we were so nervous and just you know. But when we got up to meet him, he was just like you and me, man. He was just like so humble and, “Hey, man!” And so that made us feel good. So we performed and then the second time it was at the zoo in Albuquerque. He came and did another show there. And that was special because my dad was there and he was talking to my dad on the side there, and he introduced us and my brother started playing the song, whatever. He just turned around and he was like, and he got on the microphone and he said something like, “¡Échale!” It touched him because it was that style that he’s used to in Texas, you know the conjunto style. So he was really, really . . . and he was just really nice to us, man. Really laughing, joking around. And then we went to record. We came to Texas to record on Joey Records, which is a pretty big label, Flaco Jiménez recorded on that label.
So when we came out with the CD, we get a phone call from Johnny Canales’s people, and they said, “Hey, we would like you guys to come down and do a show in McAllen.” And that’s where he was based out of, McAllen. He had this show there for the longest time and he’d have a live audience. And that was a special show. We got to have dinner with him and he was just a humble guy, man. He was just an ordinary . . . he loved music. And when he’d hear the music, he would just say, “You got it! Take it away!” Whatever. And he would be like, “Oh, échale!” He just filled up with so much joy and you could tell in his gritos or his yells that he was happy. It moved him. The music moved him. Whether it was hardcore conjunto from the regional area to Fito Olivares. He was a big fan of Los Huracanes del Norte, Los Rieleros, you know the norteño bands from Mexico and from the States as well. And the conjuntos, the pioneers and stuff. As a matter of fact, he had the Texas Tornados on there.
J. B. Sauceda: Yeah, I was going to say, I’ve got a recording of one of those when they played “Adios Mexico” and wanted to watch it with you to just kind of get some reactions.
Max Baca: Sure.
J. B. Sauceda: Because I think visually the music’s incredible just on its own. But part of what I love so much about watching these segments is the clothing, the showmanship, but the approachability of all of that still. So, yeah, I want to watch this clip with you.
Max Baca: Okay.
Max Baca: Oh wow, that looks like some kind of a big discotheque hall or something.
[The Texas Tornados play “Adios Mexico” on The Johnny Canales Show]
J. B. Sauceda: When we grew up, my dad was the world’s biggest Tornados fan.
Max Baca: Oh, yeah?
J.B. Sauceda: Because he grew up in San Benito.
Max Baca: Oh, yeah. Freddie Fender’s from there.
J. B. Sauceda: Yeah.
Max Baca: See, the guy that’s playing the bajo sexto there behind? His name was Oscar Tellez, and he was my idol.
J. B. Sauceda: Really?
Max Baca: He was my idol. There was nobody, in my book, nobody better than that guy, man. He was just amazing, man.
J. B. Sauceda: What did you love about him?
Max Baca: I took his place. I learned when I was seven years old—I’m fifty-seven now, fifty years ago—I’d seen him play with Flaco in Lubbock, Texas. My dad would take me and my brother to go see Flaco play there. And Flaco back then would sell it out three nights in a row. This huge, thousand-capacity. It was a big wooden floor, the wooden dance floor. You know the big, the stage and then the tables on the side. It’s called the Fronteriso. And in the back it was where they have the livestock, what do you call— auctions and stuff, cows and horses, whatever. So they would throw the sawdust on the dance floor, man. And this big, huge dance floor, man. And that’s when I saw him play bajo sexto with Flaco, and then I said, “That’s what I want to be.” I said, “That’s what I want to do.” It just inspired me so much. And, yeah, I picked up . . . I already played guitar. And then he taught me a few chords. Flaco actually showed me a few chords, and then that’s where I picked it up.
J. B. Sauceda: How long had you been playing with him?
Max Baca: I played with him for ten years—’90. What was it? 1990. I came in about 1990.
J. B. Sauceda: Okay.
Max Baca: They were, they started, they formed around ’88, ’89. like that. And then Oscar was the original bajo player. And then the story is . . . It’s a funny story, but it’s uh, he, uh, they were going to go to Japan and they were in Chicago. They did a show in Chicago and then they were going to fly the next day to Japan, right? Overseas. And for some reason, Oscar, he stayed behind with the camaradas you know, with the buddies you know drinking and stuff, and he didn’t make the flight. So they took off without him. They had to go to tour in Japan. And pretty much he stayed there in Chicago for three months before anybody heard anything from him. And I was like, “Oscar?!” So that time, that’s when I came in, because after a month, they needed the bajo player, man. And so they had just they came through Albuquerque and the Flaco called me, says, “Bring your bajo.” I flew to San Diego. We all got there and then we got into two buses and we toured up California and then, and then eventually worked our way to Washington, D.C., to play Bill Clinton’s inaugural ball.
J. B. Sauceda: Wow.
Max Baca: Yeah. So that was a fun ten years of my life that I can . . . it’s just priceless memories.
J. B. Sauceda: The talk of the Tornados actually brings me to another kind of thought—
Max Baca: Sure, man.
J. B. Sauceda: That I’d been having, which is that I grew up both my parents, my mom’s from Carrizo and my dad’s from San Benito. So we grew up Sunday mornings listening to Johnny Canales. We listened to tejano music, and it felt like our music, right?
Max Baca: Of course.
J. B. Sauceda: It was our music.
Max Baca: It is our music. The conjunto came from, it started in the valley from Narciso Martínez.
J. B. Sauceda: Yeah.
Max Baca: When the Germans and the Czechs and the Europeans settled in Texas at the turn of the century, they brought over that accordion, the button accordion, because there was no accordions here in America, you know. There was no factories or anything like that. So they brought over the accordion, and then Narciso Martínez was one of the first to hear the oompah sound, the Germans and Santiago Jiménez Senior, Flaco’s daddy here in San Antonio.
[Narciso Martínez plays “Cecelia”]
Max Baca: So there was a big German community in New Braunfels. There still is. And so they would hear . . . Flaco told me that his dad would hear the . . . or Flaco would hear the radio. Those old radios were just like—
J. B. Sauceda: One line.
Max Baca: One line with some few numbers there, few stations, whatever. And he’d tune in and they’d hear the polkas and stuff. So that’s where we picked it up, you know. Narciso Martínez, grabbed it, finally got a hold of an accordion, and then we incorporated the bajo sexto—that’s what I play. Bajo sexto is a twelve-string guitar with bass strings and guitar strings, and it was designed to take the place of that accompaniment part of the accordion. Because they would take the leads here, right? And then they would gentle, gentle with the accompaniment part here. So they said, “We want to get an instrument to sound like that,” so that it would be easier for the accordion players to be faster and flashier or whatever. Progressive. And so they came up with the bajo sexto and Martin Macías migrated. Well, he came from Spain into Michoacán, Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico, where he learned how to make guitars there.
And then as far as the research that I’ve researched it on, there’s no names or anybody that says who invented the bajo sexto. The only one that comes into play is Martin Macias. He learned from a luthier in Mexico, Paracho, Michoacán. Then he migrated to San Antonio and he started working at a furniture store in San Antonio, and that’s where he was making the bajos. And so then finally he got to making bajos and selling them, and then he got his own place. And the rest is history, man.
J. B. Sauceda: I hadn’t realized it was that distinctive a decision to . . . we want to just replace this sound but keep the oompah and that accompaniment.
Max Baca: Yes. So if you hear, if you listen, if you hear on the accompaniment part of the accordion, right? There’s a bass and there’s a treble side. And the treble is pretty much the rhythm and the bass is the bass. So if you hear the bass, it’s . . . you hear a high and a low octave. Kind of like a tuba, but with a high and low octave on it. And if you hear the treble side, so the bass is a dom, and then the other side is a chank. Dom, chank, dom, chank, dom, chank, dom, chank. So if you hear the chank, it’s like a unison sound. And so that’s what they did. That’s how they did the bajo sexto.
J. B. Sauceda: Incredible. Is it set up pretty much the same way as a guitar in terms of the scales or—
Max Baca: No, it’s tuned differently. It’s tuned in fourths. So it’s tuned like a bass.
J. B. Sauceda: Okay.
Max Baca: But it’s got six strings. It’s got six double strings. Twelve strings but you press two for one. It’s like a six string pair or whatever, twelve. Okay. But you’re doing the bass: boom, da, doom, da-doom, doom, doom. And you’re playing and you’re doing the rhythm as a guitar would do. So you’re doing both. And actually the bajo has got these thicker strings so when you strike it with a pick, if you just, if you take the sound off the rhythm and off the bass, you’re hearing a chk, chk, chk. You’re hearing a snare drum or a high hat or something. So it’s percussive.
It’s got the percussive. So you’re doing three instruments in one. You know what I mean? And so that allowed for the accordion players to go in and out, and do, fast and flash and faster and flashier licks and stuff like that instead of just the simple, do-de-do-de-de-de-do. Just the simple like the Germans would play like that, accompaniment themselves. So yeah, we took it to another level, modernizing it.
J. B. Sauceda: Are you familiar with that documentary Chulas Fronteras?
Max Baca: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
J. B. Sauceda: And I don’t remember who had the quote in the movie, but I remember somebody specifically saying that they took a lot of pride and they weren’t hiding from the fact that they had kind of taken the accordion from the German polka, but that they felt like that they had put a spin and kind of a flair on it that was unique to the Mexicano and Chicano identity.
Max Baca: Of course. What it was is once we got the accordion . . . Once we incorporated and got the bajo sexto in play, then it’s a duet, right? So that’s when we created our own style because that was unique. Once we did that, this is Tex-Mex now: Accordion is the Tex and the bajo sexto is the Mex. And the migrant farm workers working the fields back then, well, that was their entertainment. It was just those two instruments. And they’d go under a tree after a week working the fields, and in a barn they’d have a pachanga or shindig, whatever. And it was just the bajo and accordion jamming, playing. And we were playing just traditional folk songs from Mexico. The songs like “La Adelita” and those old tunes and “Los Laureles” and whatever you know back then.
It was just strictly instrumentals. They would do redovas, shotiz. What is it, marzurka. Or, of course, the polka. So they wouldn’t sing. It was just, Narciso didn’t sing back then. It was just instrumentals. And then later on, as it evolved, Valerio Longoria was the, and Santiago Jiménez, was the one that started adding the singing to the rhythms. And then later on, actually, then they incorporated an upright bass. And the reason why, because Juan Tejeda from the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, he explained it to me was, because back then they had the bajo and the accordion, right? So they’d be playing outside or whatever. And back then they didn’t have no microphones or PA systems, anything like that. So it was just right there what you hear. And the people would be dancing, but then larger crowds started coming along, and then you couldn’t hear them anymore.
You couldn’t hear. So that’s when they got the upright bass. Now you hear the boom, boom, and they were able to dance to the beat of the beat of the bass, and then eventually a drum set. And so then once they had the drum set, then it’s the conjunto. They would say, “I have my conjunto, I have my own conjunto,” my group, whatever, my band. So if you had a conjunto, they considered that, that’s cantina music. And they wanted to fit into society better because back then it was a lot of discrimination. And so we wanted to fit into society, to climb the ladder.
J. B. Sauceda: Interesting. Yeah. When Little Joe started to incorporate horns, where did that come from?
Max Baca: Little Joe started using the horns in the polkas that were from the conjuntos, adding all that. The horns and the trumpets or whatever and created Little Joe y La Familia sound. And I would say he was probably the first to get identified as an orchestra, a tejano orchestra.
[Little Joe y La Familia on The Johnny Canales Show]
J. B. Sauceda: Growing up, for me, when I define tejano, I think about basically the orchestra version.
Max Baca: Yeah.
J. B. Sauceda: Or that offshoot—
Max Baca: Sure.
J. B. Sauceda : As Emilio and more of this sort of, kind of, spanned both. And probably more so than him, Ruben Ramos or any of them that really had the horns was played in our house a lot. The Latin Breed—
Max Baca: Latin Breed. There was the Tortilla Factory was one that had some outstanding horns, man, you know. And the producer, Joe Gallardo was the producer, and he would arrange all these arrangements for the Tortilla Factory and even some for Little Joe and that was because we wanted to play those big ballrooms. We didn’t want to play in the cantinas.
J. B. Sauceda: Yeah, I mean, it is really interesting just this idea of even kind of economic growth. It wasn’t purely just about the entertainment. It was this functionally will make it easier for us to sell more tickets and play bigger audiences, et cetera. When you think about . . . as a kid, when I heard the term “Latin music,” I thought about Juanes, I thought about stuff that wasn’t necessarily from here.
Max Baca: Right.
J. B. Sauceda: But, and I don’t know if this was just the selfishness of growing up or self-centeredness of growing up in Texas and feeling like tejano was wholly separate. But how do you see tejano music and conjunto music as kind of fitting into the bigger picture of Latin music?
Max Baca: Well, see, I guess the word “Latin” just means anybody that’s Spanish-speaking. It could be from Mexico all the way down to South America. All the Latino communities, that’s Latin. Now each, there’s different genres, which would be conjunto, tejano—they call it tejano—I call it Tex-Mex. And I know Flaco does, Little Joe does as well. And tejano means, tejano music means Texas music. Texan music. That could be Stevie Ray Vaughan. He’s tejano.
J. B. Sauceda: Yeah.
Max Baca: That’s tejano music. So they just kind of make it to what you say, tejano is like conjunto—tejano. But in all reality, it’s Chicano music, it’s Tex-Mex music. Now there’s different styles. There’s norteño, there’s bachata, there’s so many different styles, genres of music, but it’s all fit in the Latino name.
J. B. Sauceda: I want to zero in a little bit on you. What was life like growing up? How did music play in?
Max Baca: Well, my dad was an accordion player. My dad was a musician. He had seven albums that he recorded back in the sixties. And when I was a young kid, I would listen to my dad rehearse with his band, and I had to go to school the next morning. So I’d get in trouble because I’d be up late there on the floor just peeking around the corner. I was just attracted to it, to the sound of the music, the bajo sexto and the accordion. And so, eventually, when I was five years old, my dad taught me how to play the accordion. By the time I was seven, I was my dad’s bass player in his band.
J. B. Sauceda: Incredible.
Max Baca: He took me to the pawn shop and he says, “Hey, come here. See this bass? Do you like it?” “Yeah, it’s nice.” He goes, “Okay, I’m going to buy it because I need a bass player for next weekend and you need to learn it.” So I was like, I had to learn it in a week, in a week you know. But it was easy because I guess I had the gift—
J. B. Sauceda: I was going to say or ask if it felt like it came natural to you.
Max Baca: Yeah. It came natural to me. They taught me the basics, and I learned it like that. Real quick. And then, from there, I kind of progressed on into learning more and wanting to learn more. And you can never learn enough. It’s just, music is like numbers. It never ends. It just keeps . . . there’s so many progressions and chords and it’s just a beautiful thing, music. It’s a challenge because I’m trying to play a folk instrument that’s just an accompaniment instrument that when it first started off, into something that’s more modern now, taking leads and doing these flashy licks and whatever. But I love it.
I remember my dad had a PA system, and it was just, it was just two speakers, little speakers. It didn’t even have a horn or nothing. It was just . . . and that was it. There was no monitors. It was just three or four microphones, one for the accordion and one for the vocals, and that’s it. And me and my brother played with that same PA system, went through the high school, through our teens. But I remember growing up, going back to the beginning when I was seven years old, I used to play bass with my dad and I remember we’d play at the Native Indian reservations, and I remember they’d come up to my dad and say, “Hey, we like that chicken scratch music you’re playing.” And I was like, “What is it? Are they putting us down? Or what? Chicken scratch? Do you mean chicken s—?” But no, and it’s actually Native . . . if you look up “chicken scratch music,” it’s Native Indians. Natives playing our music. It’s playing conjunto music.
J. B. Sauceda: Whoa.
[Southern Scratch plays “Concerned Walia”]
Max Baca: But they don’t sing. They play “Volver, Volver,” but they’ll just play the instrumentally. And my dad used to play a lot in Arizona, so we’d go to Gallup and Grants, Gallup, Tucson or Phoenix. The Calderon Ballroom, 1969, my dad played there. And then later on when I was five years old, my dad got me up and set me on a chair, and I played a polka on the accordion at five years old.
J. B. Sauceda: You end up eventually taking over for your idol. The person that you thought was the best bajo sexto player on the planet. What did it take to get there? How did that even happen?
Max Baca: I was very fortunate and blessed to be there at the right place at the right time. I grew up with Flaco Jiménez as a father figure to me. Flaco became part of the family. He knew my mom and dad. Every time he’d go through Albuquerque, he’d stop and stay, stay at our house. He’d stop and stay at the house. And so we became family. Then he invited me, join his band, and I started playing with Flaco overseas and different places. The first tour I did was Flaco was in Spain, and I had never— I’m this, this young kid from Albuquerque, New Mexico, me and my brother had our band, and we were just playing these little cantinas, quinceañeras, weddings, whatever. And all of a sudden, boom, joined Flaco Jiménez and joined the Texas Tornados playing stadiums and it’s like. . . . But according to Flaco, he said that I was a good bajo player, that I was a damn good bajo player. And so that he said, “I’m going to nab him.” But I’m honored for that. I’m very humbled and honored.
Oscar Tellez was my idol. Unfortunately, he passed on. But I was at the right place. They went through Albuquerque. They called me just to sit in for the night because they didn’t have Oscar with them, and they figured, “Hey, might as well do the tour.” So they asked me to do the tour. And so, of course, I accepted it. And then we played our first night in San Diego. And so after the show, Freddy had the sound guy record the show, and he was listening to it afterwards.
So the next morning, before we left, they called me to the room. And it was the four principals: It was Flaco, Augie, Freddy, and Doug Sahm. And Doug, he called me and said, “Hey, man, we’re going to have a meeting here. Come over to Freddy’s room.” So I came over to Freddy’s room. And I sat down, “Yeah, what’s going on?” “We just want to welcome you to the Texas Tornados.” I was like, “Wow,” you know. And I’m like, “I accept.” I was blown away. It was just a lucky break, and I’m very blessed. Like I said, I was very blessed to be there for that.
J. B. Sauceda: Well, I think that the thing that you said that resonated the most with me was just this: There was a utility to the music that was, simply just, this is what was available. It was easy. And we had access to these instruments and we could pull them out and kind of put on our own performances. But with time, it grew its audience and it scaled its like kind of utility to the size of the people or the people coming to the dances and all of that. But there was an aspirational component of it, too, that was kind of pulling the music forward and kind of allowing it to evolve into these different formats that you talked about. I, in a lot of ways, it goes back to The Johnny Canales Show, which was—
Max Baca: He played a very important role, man.
J. B. Sauceda: He brought it all together, didn’t he?
Max Baca: He sure did. Like I said, if you were a musician, you, you wanted to be on his show. That’d be like a dream to come out on his show.
J. B. Sauceda: Well, then the audience was rowdy, and you’d have some people kind of sitting there, but there’d be people up there singing. And there were some recordings that I watched where people were dancing in the backgrounds.
Max Baca: Oh, yeah. Yeah. He always had a live audience.
J. B. Sauceda: Yeah. It felt like we were there at home.
Max Baca: Yeah.
J. B. Sauceda: It was like when we would, in Houston, we’d listen to KQQK—
Max Baca: Yeah.
J. B. Sauceda: And my parents still have recordings of a lot of those radio shows, and we felt like we were part of a party, even though we were by ourselves as a family.
Max Baca: Sure, yeah. yeah.
J. B. Sauceda: It was like we knew other families were listening to it and participating, and there was something about that experience on Sunday mornings, come home from church, eating breakfast. My mom would always make chorizo—
Max Baca: That was a perfect time to have the music.
J. B. Sauceda: Yeah, it was fantastic.
Max Baca: That was usually Sunday, go to church, after church, barbacoa, and then music, while you’re having barbacoa, you know, and Johnny Canales. You look, “Wait, wait! Turn it on! Johnny Canales!” And you’re always like, “Who’s coming? Who does he got? Who does he have?”
J. B. Sauceda: I talk about him as . . . and my dad used to say this because I wasn’t really familiar with his music, personally, but he was kind of a musician’s musician. You strike me as kind of the same.
Max Baca: Yes.
J. B. Sauceda: Right?
Max Baca: Absolutely.
J. B. Sauceda: Is that an accurate description?
Max Baca: Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m a musician’s musician, man.
J. B. Sauceda: What does success look like for you? You won Grammys, you’ve done a lot of things. Are you trying to be the household name? Do you want to play your music and make a living doing it?
Max Baca: I’ve been fortunate and blessed to be able to make a living playing music, but I am just . . . my goal is to someday leave the younger kids to keep on carrying on the tradition. So if I can influence some younger bajo player, some accordion player or, that’s what I’m in for, man. Yeah, we have to pay our bills. Of course. that’s a given. Yeah, I’ve had my water shut off a bunch of times, man. Grammy Award winner, Max Baca, and they shut my water off. But, like I said, I’ve been blessed to be able to have been able to work. I’m just one of the guys, man. I’m just one of the guys. And my dad always instilled in me to be humble and to be humble no matter what. And I’ve learned that throughout the years, hanging out with Flaco. Because Flaco’s the most humblest musician there is. And being able to meet so many different musicians and people and just realizing, hey, this is about the music. It’s about the music and about . . . great music brings people together. It brings everybody together. And so let’s just be happy and let’s just enjoy while we’re here because one day you’re here and the next minute you could be gone. And the way I look at it is, my desire is to make sure and to inspire younger, younger people to play music, to keep up the tradition, to keep following the footsteps of this music. Because conjunto music it’s, like I said, it was cantina music, and it comes from the people. It’s our music, man. We grew up, we picked all the vegetables and this is our music, man, you know? And we nurtured it. Then later on, evolved, whatever you want to call it, tejano music, Tex-Mex, it’s about the music. It’s a beautiful thing. Music is beautiful, man.
[Max Baca plays “San Antonio Rose”]
J. B. Sauceda (voice-over): Alright, that was my conversation with Max Baca. Thanks so much to Max for coming into the studio to talk with me, and to all of y’all for listening.
We’ll be back next week with Congressman Joaquin Castro, who’ll talk about the tejano artists he listened to growing up in San Antonio, and why a cultural moment carries political power too. See you then, adios!
