Road trip music

Music for a Hispanic heritage road trip to the southwest: while there is a great deal of fine Mexican and Mexican American music to be heard. my one choice for you is Tish Hinojosa. Take a listen:

The border lands between the southwestern United States and northern Mexico are places where cultures of several sorts intersect, and where’s there long history of political, social, and cultural change on both side of the border. Those things find their expression in music as well.

History and culture play into the celebration of Hispnaic Heritage, be that at Hispanic Heritage Month or at other times of year, for a specific time or for any time that strikes you. C Culture Swing is perhaps Hinojosa’s most well known album, but there are more than a dozen others to enjoy, music which illuminates her experiences as is as a first generation Mexican American in the southwest and in other parts of the world.

Aquella Noche, which is an all Spanish album, is a fine choice, as Homeland, with songs which speak of cowboys, border crossings, and growing up on the west side of town in San Antonio. Dreaming from the Labyrith offers a mystical take on the voyages of explorers, on thoughts during a rainstorm, and on journey on God’s own open road. Our Little Planet finds her continuing to draw these threads of life and culture together with an artist's gift for idea, word, and melody, as does at this writing her most recent recording: With a Guitar and a Pen.

You may also wish to see
Tish Hinojosa: Our Little Planet
Ian Tyson: Yellowhead to Yellowstone
road trip music: New Mexico
rTish Hinojosa's web site

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Cinco de Mayo: music

Cinco de Mayo is the anniversary of a historic battle in the Mexican state of Puebla which has transformed, over the years, to a celebration of Mexican culture and heritage that’s marked especially in the United States.

Tish Hinojosa is first generation Mexican American. Her album Aquella Noche
It makes a fine soundtrack for marking the holiday, although if you’re expecting raucous Tejano style songs, you’ll not find them here.

Hinojosa does not follow that pop culture and rock infused style, but rather is a Texan who sings in both English and Spanish, writing her own songs and sometimes, as on the this recording, mixing in her favorite border and Mexican classics as well. There’ll be more on Hinojosa and her music when the Great American Road Trip: Music travels the southwest, and there’s more to explore at the links below as well.

Meanwhile, take a listen to the dance song Cumbia, Polka, y Mas, the classic Reloj, and the intriguing title song as you prepare your Cinco de Mayo celebrations.


you may also wish to see

Music Road: Tish Hinojosa: Our Little Planet
Music Road: music for parents and children
Music Road: ten songs

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Tish Hinojosa: Our Little Planet

Our Little Planet



Tish Hinojosa has always been an adventurous musician, combining her interests in country and folk music with her heritage as as a first generation Mexican American. Texas, New Mexico, the borderlands, northern Mexico and life on the road are all part of her musical imagination here, as are country music, swing, polka, and folk ballad, along with love songs and songs of social justice and social commentary. That sounds like a lot of ground to cover in one record, and it is. Hinojosa has long been adept at getting all these ideas and flavors to work together for her unique vision of life, though. Twenty one years ago the title cut of her first recording, Taos to Tennessee, framed love, journeys, and choices in southwestern mountain landscapes and the scent of pinon fires; the title track of this latest one sees her looking for and finding hope and connection amidst life’s changes and challenges while swirling across the dance floor to a polka beat, and in two languages.

Hinojosa offers clear eyed comment on the way of the world today in We Mostly Feel That Way, a song which includes fine accordion work from Chip Dolan and outstanding duet singing from Rosie Flores. What Our Hearts Can’t Say is an understated and quietly reflective love song set in vivid descriptions of the natural world. Roadsongs and Bygones finds the artist riding down the road looking at the changes in the countryside the and thinking about the deeper lessons to be taken from looking at the passing scenes; Mi Pueblo, with very fine duet singing and violin work from Carrie Rodriguez, finds the singer considering the pull and the power of love through life’s journeys.

It’s a fine next step for Hinojosa, who two decades into her career has never sounded better. She co produced the project with long time musical collaborator Marvin Dykhuis, who shows up on backing vocals and about a dozen different instruments -- really. Hinojosa will be touring behind the US release of the record this summer: catch her live if you get the chance.

Hinojosa’s tour schedule is availble at her website

An extended interview with Hinojosa including comments on the making of Our Little Planet is available in print in the current issue of the folk and world music magazine Dirty Linen. More about where to find that here.


you may also want to see.

Cathie Ryan: Irish and American

ten songs

Christine Albert: Paris, Texafrance

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Looking toward Christmas: Kidstuff

Is there a young child, or the parent of one, on your gift list? Here's music to consider for them.

Both parent an child will likely enjoy Down at the Sea Hotel. By turns as whimsical as the title cut, by Iowa singer songwriter Greg Brown, and as thoughtful as Steve Earle’s Nothing but a Child, which is sung together by many of the artists who contribute to this album, it’s a varied collection with top singers and songwriters offering familiar and less familiar songs by other top contemporary writers. Guy Davis singss a bluesy Midnight Lullaby, while Eliza Gilkyson delivers two of the really standout cuts on the disc, Midnight in Missoula and the Carole King classic Child of Mine. Other singers include Lucy Kaplansky, John Gorka, and Lynn Miles, on songs written by Mary Chapin Carpenter, Tom Waits, and others.

Do kids themselves create songs that will hold up to repeated listening? Well, at the very least you know you’ll get a few topics adult writers might not at first choose. The Football Toad and Papaya People are two of those Rory Block helped the kids in her sons’ school classes bring to life on the album Color Me Wild. Block is known as an intense and powerful blues singer and guitarist, but she says “I also have a really off the wall sense of humor.” That probably came in really helpful when her children were small, which is when she put together this project.

A whole list of well known (and Grammy winning) musicians from Darrell Scott to Amy Grant joined up with the Nashville Chamber Orchestra and Paul Reisler’s Kid Pan Alley project to let kids see and experience what it’s like to create a song. The result: some lovely lullabyes, some funny stuff, and, well, a song about socks...

Tish Hinojosa offers a batch of songs both parents and children will enjoy on Cada Nino. Hinojosa is first generation Mexican American, and she draws on this background to remember in song trips to visit her grandmother back in Mexico and talk about some women of border history. Soon you and your kids will liklely be singing along with Hinojosa in both English and Spanish, especially on her hilarious imagining of what the vegetables get up to when we’re not looking, El Baile Vegetal/Vegetable Dance.

Jane Siberry offers a recording that’ll likely have you singing along too, although in a quieter way, as you might suspect from its title, Hush. This is Siberry in a relaxed folk mode, offering familiar songs including We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder, All Through the Night, and The Water Is Wide. If you are in a lullaby frame of mind, you might want to look up Padraigin ni Uallachain's music, especially her recording Irish Lullaby. If you're looking more for humor, laughter, and challenge, then check out Celebrate the Difference, from Terri Hendrix.

Music on the album Mother is traditional, from Ireland, and original, out of the lives of the three artists who created this record, Susan McKeown, Robin Spielberg, and Cathie Ryan. It is music you probably have not heard before. Though it was intended for mothers, it works for mother, grandmothesr, and their children: It’s a powerful and loving celebration of the connections and disconnections and understandings that motherhood and making all life’s transitions invites. It’s also music that allows much as much space for the listener as it does for the artists who created it.

There are lively tunes and gracious ones, simple ones and complex, ones presented with sparse accompaniment and those with intricate acoustic support. Spielberg’s piano exploration without words of a walk with her mother, McKeown’s evocation of older times in Ancient Mother, the lively dance of joy of both child and grandparent in Ryan Grandma’s Song, each offer gifts of understanding and connection, as do the other songs on this collection.

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Tish Hinojosa: Best of the Sandia

Best of the Sandia: the Watermelon Years

Tish Hinojosa is a major talent, an artist of real substance, a first generation Mexican American who makes that experience the substance of her musical ideas on love, loss, change, connection, and trust. These tracks are taken from projects recorded in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and include a heretofore unreleased duet with Kris Kristofferson. She’s still a major talent a decade an half on from these songs, and these are still worth repeated listening. Taos to Tennessee, Eres Tu, and Prairie Moon are three of my favorites.



read about Hinojosa's latest project Our Little Planet

photograph of Tish Hinojosa and Marvin Dykhuis at the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar in Austin, Texas

If you enjoy what you are reading here, come visit -- and perhaps, subscribe -- to my newsletter at Substack for more stories about music, the people who make it, and the places which inspire it.

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through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.

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