Photo: Austin City Limits

FLACO JIMENEZ "El Sonido de San Antonio"

(The Sound of San Antonio)

There are plenty of reasons why I con-sider San Antonio to be the heppest city in America today. Sipping a cold beer in one of SA's open-air icehouses is one of them. Cruising low and slow through the barrio on Zarzamora or West Commerce streets is another. Then there's the local cuisine like came guisada at the Acapulco, huevos ran-cheros at the Esquire and great German sausage on just about any street corner. There's the distinctive Spanish mission ar-chitecture and the crumbling missions themselves. There's places like the Paseo de! Rio downtown, the Tower of the Amer-icas, the two hometown breweries, the Alma Latina Dinner Club & Salon de Baile, and Big Red soda pop. Dark-haired, brown-eyed beauties who seem to be everywhere. Fiesta. Scores of backyard recording studios. Spanish radio, especially Guero Polkas, the Chicano Wolfman Jack. The afternoon Express News, arguably the most sensational newspaper in America. The unusual confluence of Anglo, Afro and Latin cultures. The loose, languid rhythm of the streets.

San Antonio's music mirrors these unique attributes. No matter how one happens to feel at a particular moment, there is a compatible sound that is puro San Anto to fit the mood: there are strolling mariachis, German polka bands, lowdown rhythm 'n' blues, huge brass bands, and the real kind of Western dance music you don't see or hear about in the movies. No one par-ticular music or musician, however, epito-mizes the sound of SA as well as Flaco Jimenez, known hereabouts as El Rey de Acordeon (the King of the Squeezebox) and the unrivalled leader of San Antonio's con-iuntos.

Flaco inherits his talent from a family line of gifted musicians. His grandfather was one of the area's first mexicanos to pick up the accordion and learn polkas fr m his German neighbors two generations ago. Flaco's father, Santiago, the original El Flaco (skinny guy), refined the polka into a puro Teiano piece of jolly, rocking music that fit right in with his repertoire of mazurkas , waltzes, and occasional huapangos; during the three decades of his

career norteno grew into the most popular sound of Spanish-speaking Texas. Today Flaco himself has refined that sound even further, adding adventurous touches of blues and jazz phrasing to his accordion style while still remaining firmly w ithin the Conjunto Norteno tradition. He may occasionally make a concession to modern trends as he did a couple of years ago when he added the country hit " Lucl