A bayside afternoon with Tony De La Rosa

By María Eugenia Guerra

I was on a foray to scout fishing sites on or near the coast and I had taken up the invitation of San Ygnacio residents Alicia Emma and Lupe Gutierrez to visit their weekend house at Riviera.
I'd just gulped in the contrast of the blue Texas sky and the placid bay waters against the bright green grass and the weathered wood of their home and said hello to my hosts. Moving past their warm welcome, my friends and I paused in rote politeness to shake the hand of two of their other guests, one a man who persistently asked me, "Do you know me?"
The old hard drive (mine) -- packed with decades of stories and their subjects -- whirred and clanked to conjure the name behind those beautiful eyes under the curved bill of the gimme cap that apprised that the man wearing it was the best dad en el mundo. I knew he had another claim to fame and I knew those eyes and that voice, but without the trademark Stetson and the accordion, I drew blanks, the way I do after my deadline has passed and I relax my hold on details.
On so ordinary and beautiful a Sunday, Tejano legend and accordionista extraordinaire Tony De La Rosa reintroduced himself to me and also introduced his wife Lucy to all of us.
I'd written a story about him for LareDOS in May 1997, when he and a couple of friends from Zapata had stopped by my office, a story he said was the best story that had ever been written about him.
As if it wasn't enough to run into Tony De La Rosa in so serene and beautiful a setting, we shared a seafood feast prepared by Lucy and Alicia Emma -- some of it caught off the Gutierrez' pier that extends 365 feet from the shore to a Tee in the bay.
After lunch, Tony and Don Lupe napped in easy chairs on the screened porch, no doubt catching the sweet dreams that blew in on the bay breezes. The afternoon took on its own lazy meander and eventually we gathered once again at the dining table for la hora del café, and this is where I pulled out the note paper as Tony De La Rosa took a long look back over a career high-noted, he said, by the friendships he made along the way, not only with musicians and promoters, but especially with the fans.
"The accordion was very quiet 15 years ago," he said. "Mariachi and conjunto were thought of as cantina music, so we started playing in lounges, which we would pack with 60 or 70 fans who looked for us wherever we were playing," he said.
"We have always had a special relationship with our listening public, with the fans. That's where the energy comes from. They tell you. They give you. You are singing, and they are singing with you. They were always the best; the doors of homes were always open to us. Those who have followed us, those who have listened to the message of gran sentimiento in our music, we have seen them weeping and allegre, tristes y ahogados de emoción," De La Rosa continued, adding, "My music is the most simple, but it is of joy, and it comes from the heart. I am well known, not for the writing of the lyrics, but for the music, for polka.
"I used to say at performances, 'Let's see who tires first!' The fans never tire. They can wear you out. I stopped saying it," De La Rosa recalled.
I asked De La Rosa, a 1999 National Heritage Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts how the music had changed over his lifetime. "We used to worry that no one would take it up after us, but I feel such pride about the upcoming groups who try so hard. Van muy avanzados. They study and they are able to play some of everything and they are well-prepared to cross over into another kind of music. But the question, always, is, 'Do you have a heart? Do you feel the songs?'" Of crossing over into another genre, De La Rosa said, "It began a long time ago, but they are just now flipping that tortilla."
He said he wanted youngsters to know the importance of staying in school and the importance of being guided by conscience. "Life takes you down many roads. Some of them are under construction. Slow down and enjoy it when you should; speed up when the road is good. Alcohol and drugs? Don't go down that road. Forget alcohol and drugs. Ask me and I will tell you how they serve you," he said.
"My generation was destined to another life, the life beyond the ranch where we lived, a life beyond el azadón y el rastrillo. My mother and father said, 'Go make your life off this ranch.' I never believed I would be known as an artist since I came from the time of laborers on farms and ranches. You became what you were offered, the hoe or the rake," De La Rosa said, adding, "My life as a musician took me from here to all parts of the country, to many big cities. Imagine. Many times I have felt it so deeply, so unable to explain it to myself. Once you are on the stage, you own nothing but the music."
De La Rosa, himself a prolific song writer, continued, speaking of the music authored by others,. "We who perform put ourselves in the shoes of the song writer. They cry, we cry. They sing, we sing." Of his own music, he said, "Every phrase has a message, a sentiment. Anyone can hear that. If it is not my own music I am singing, it is my name I left behind," he said.
"It's never been about money. I've earned more in my last 20 years than in all my 50 years on the road. I want to be remembered "as one of los chavos".
Despite his failing health, De La Rosa said he still felt he could be out on the road. "I want everyone to know it is my health that has kept me from them, and I want them to know that I miss them."
I'd brought my fishing pole with me on the off chance that I could plunk it into Baffin Bay to try my luck at the incredible drum the Gutierrez' have harvested over years. I should have brought my recorder, for even as he spoke, Don Antonio De La Rosa was making music.