JANUARY 3, 2023 — UTSA Libraries Special Collections has announced the debut of “The Real Tejano Conjunto Accordion Book,” a one-of-a-kind book and piece of art that tells the story of accordionists and the musical art form that they helped develop in and around San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley.
“We commissioned ‘The Real Tejano Conjunto Accordion Book’ to highlight the importance of the accordion and accordionists in Tejano music,” said Steph Noell, UTSA special collections librarian. “While the format of the book will excite and intrigue people, the content is just as important as it highlights a segment of music and musicians who are major figures in Tejano music but are rarely talked about.”
“The Real Tejano Conjunto Accordion Book” joins more than 250 other “artists’ books” in the Rare Books Collection at UTSA Libraries that have been preserved and are publicly accessible in perpetuity for students, faculty and researchers. Artists’ books are works of art in which artists use the medium of books to create small print runs or one-of-a-kind objects.
“Some are readable, and some are just art, but they all stretch the imagination of what we consider a book,” Noell said.
In this video, book artist Peter Thomas talks about why and how he and his wife, Donna Thomas, created the book with assistance from the Arhoolie Foundation. The foundation was created from the work of founder Chris Strachwitz and his seminal independent record label Arhoolie Records. They are dedicated to documenting, preserving and celebrating regional roots music and its makers with a particular emphasis on the genres of blues, Cajun/Zydeco and Tejano/Norteño.
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The San Antonio Military Health and Universities Research Forum (SURF) attracts presenters from around the nation to showcase the work of students, trainees, faculty and staff. The mission of the SURF conference is to “advance research collaborations among academic, military, and industry partners to improve health outcomes and readiness.”
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Student Union Paseo, Main CampusThe University of Texas at San Antonio is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge through research and discovery, teaching and learning, community engagement and public service. As an institution of access and excellence, UTSA embraces multicultural traditions and serves as a center for intellectual and creative resources as well as a catalyst for socioeconomic development and the commercialization of intellectual property - for Texas, the nation and the world.
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UTSA is a proud Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) as designated by the U.S. Department of Education.
The University of Texas at San Antonio, a Hispanic Serving Institution situated in a global city that has been a crossroads of peoples and cultures for centuries, values diversity and inclusion in all aspects of university life. As an institution expressly founded to advance the education of Mexican Americans and other underserved communities, our university is committed to ending generations of discrimination and inequity. UTSA, a premier public research university, fosters academic excellence through a community of dialogue, discovery and innovation that embraces the uniqueness of each voice.
