Flaco Jimenez: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

by FELIX CONTRERAS Watching Flaco Jimenez play his button accordion is like looking back in time. His grandfather started playing an accordion in cantinas and family parties along the Texas/Mexican border around the late 1800s. Then Flaco’s dad, Santiago Jimenez Sr., carried on the family tradition when he released his first record in 1936. Two of the songs you hear Flaco Jimenez play in this Tiny Desk Concert are traditional German polkas; they were popular in the mid-1800s as German immigrants settled in Texas before it became part of the U.S. almost 20 years later. Over time, the two-step stayed the same, but the German lyrics were replaced by the Mexican storytelling song form known as corridos. But Jimenez is no dusty relic; he’s very much of the here and now. For almost six decades, he’s carried on those traditions and taken them to places neither his grandfather nor his father could ever imagine. He’s played with The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Dr. John, Los Lobos, Willie Nelson and Ry Cooder; he’s t