For the most part, our Mexican neighbors and knowledgeable locals find the ubiquitous Cinco de Mayo celebrations a problematic excuse for excess and a huge source of revenue for bars and liquor stores. That said, now that the date has passed, I would like to recommend a source of some gems of Mexican music, in particular, and Latin American tunes in general.

Bud and Travis, in the late 1950's and early 1960's, recorded some beautiful music of that genre. Every album they made contained at least a couple of such songs, but the ultimate statement was their Latin Album, the last they made together. Travis Edmonson grew up on the border, around Nogales and Tucson, Arizona. He was a linguist and anthropology major in college who wrote the only existing dictionary of the Yaqui Indian language. He and Bud Dashiell fell in love with the music of the border and, when they performed it, they made magic. They sounded like natives, not like "gringos."

Travis is still living in Arizona, Bud having passed away some years ago. He has a website with remastered CD's of Bud & Travis available for sale. This is not a sales pitch. But, if you truly enjoy this music, and would like to hear some fine performances of it, it's a good source. Purely acoustic, they used two classical guitars, a guitarron and light percussion in virtually all their songs.