MI Música traces the emergence and evolution of Texas-Mexican musical styles, or música tejana, in the Midwest. Tejana/o migrants in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and elsewhere in the Midwest created spaces for themselves through music and dance, culminating in robust musical communities and a homegrown Texas-Mexican music industry.

The project seeks to explain how it was that musical styles that emerged in Mexican American communities of South Texas in the 1930s and 1940s became so firmly established in the Midwest. Who carried these styles to the Midwest and by what routes did they travel? What purposes did this music serve in the lives of Tejana/o migrants?

MI Música uses oral history and archival research to document the processes through which migrant laborers collaboratively built and sustained Texas-Mexican musical community that stretched across the Midwest and helped to maintain cultural and familial ties to their former homes in Texas. Some settled-out migrants formed bands while others laid an infrastructure—dance venues, touring circuits, radio shows, record stores, and record labels—for a music industry that ran parallel to its counterpart in Texas. Through music and dance, Tejana/o migrants celebrated and reinforced a shared culture and identity, carving out a world of their own, referred to here as the Tejano Midwest.

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Do you have photos or documents to share or do you want to take part through oral history? Contact Richard Cruz Dávila, Research Specialist.

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Contact: Richard Cruz Dávila, Research Specialist