Dos Amigos

Album Review

Freddy Fender and Flaco Jimenez are, in many ways, birds of a feather. While it's true that Jimenez came from a lineage of great musicians, he and Fender spent their formative years scuffling in the cantinas on the Texas/Mexico border, playing the old songs, singing and laughing, and no doubt sometimes crying for chump change before they got breaks, hit the big time, laid down hits, won Grammy awards, and played with superstars. Dos Amigos is the joyous result of this pair going back to the first steps on the long bumpy road that made them living legends. These 14 songs are the old songs, the popular hits of the day nearly 50 years ago, and they are the ancient songs, the traditional polkas, corridos, and sons that every entertainer cut his teeth on. Recorded live in the studio, Fender and Jimenez are accompanied only by Max Baca on bajo sexto and percussionist Gabriel Zavala. The tape is rolling — there is discussion, much laughter, and above all the free-flowing passion of men in close camaraderie having a fine time. But this isn't a record that merely evokes nostalgia. Hardly. In fact, it is the sound of love: love for the music, love for the tradition, and the sheer love of playing together. The music is raw, genuine, effortless, and also loose, free-flowing, alive. The tunes themselves don't matter except to those who know them. It is the sheer joy of the performance that does. And it is here in abundance, full of passion, pathos, happiness, and that bittersweet twinge in the heart that comes from reliving the art of memory. This is an utterly necessary offering, one that transcends time and space and cultural barriers, one that offers hard — yet freewheeling and rollicking — evidence that music is a universal language.