On 'MexiAmericana,' Veronique Medrano re-examines country music's Latin roots

Veronique Medrano is a native of Brownsville, Texas, who sings country and Tejano-influenced popular music.

She's also a Garth Brooks superfan with a Master's in Information Science from the University of North Texas.

At the confluence of her background and passion exists "MexiAmericana," the BMI-signed songwriter's fourth independently released album in a decade.

On a recent September afternoon, while on BMI's Music Row rooftop, Medrano discussed why her album features music that synergizes 60 years of America's fascination with Latin American mainstream music.

"MexiAmericana" includes everything from Roy Orbison (a cover of Orbison's 1962 hit "Crying") and Freddy Fender to the diverse sounds familiar to Texas/Mexico border nights including cumbia, tribal guarachero and singalongs to countrified Carrie Underwood power-pop ballads.

"Americana, country and roots music's synonymous relationship with my native heritage or the blue-collar labor of my ancestors has not received continuous recognition and true equity in those industries," Medrano told The Tennessean.

"South Texas' loving relationship with country music is as deep as George Strait's love of Vicente Fernández," Medrano continued. "I refuse to be silent about how, institutionally, recognition for the Latinx community needs to change," she continues.

Notably, she's been a leading proponent of seeing Fender — a Mexican-American icon whose five-decade-old country hits "Before The Last Teardrop Falls" and "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" established a crossover standard — inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Medrano's work as an archivist makes her choice of covering Vikki Carr's 1988 release "Hay Otro En Tu Lugar" shine a light on Selena's Spanish-speaking progenitors in the disco-pop lane. It also highlights that, in 1962, Florencia Cardona sang a Gene Pitney-written song.

However, when "He's A Rebel" was released, the name on the vinyl read "Vikki Carr."

A half-decade later, Carr was proclaimed "the best girl singer in the business" by Dean Martin.

"Vikki's a native of El Paso, Texas, who sang rock songs that inspired generations of country music," said Medrano.

The producers on the were chosen for their ability to reflect how generations of Latinx pop inspirations have had dominant moments on America's airwaves.

Among them is Svani Quintanilla, the son of Selena's older brother AB Quintanilla, techno-cumbia star El Dusty, Ozomatli's Wil-Dog Abers and 2008 Grammy-winning Tejano producer John Ontiveros.

Working with Corpus Christi, Texas native El Dusty (who has paired with Steve Aoki, among many, on productions) forced Medrano to "level up" her work as a producer and songwriter.

That work expands across the record from the electro-pop tribal guarachero on "Pam, Pam, Pam" to a traditional cumbia-style take on Fender's "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights," trap-cumbia ballad "Lost & Found," and "Que Suerte Tienes," a pop-country heartbreak anthem.

For her Fender cover, she cites that "music is a science." Thus, she bases her version around traditional cumbia accordions playing in a jauntier Zydeco style with a sweeping, waltz-style rhythm.

The combination works. It's a Latin pop-to-country crossover that adds necessary breadth and depth to the rise in popularity for an area of the country that has produced Randy Rogers and Parker McCollum to Charley Crockett and Joshua Ray Walker, among many.

Non-Latinx artists — especially those in Americana and country — have a history of borrowing but not crediting the root inspirations of aesthetics, sounds and styles familiar to Medrano's culture and heritage.

"I'm at a place of understanding the unwritten rules of the music industry to make a recording where instrumentation and representation are presented in such a way that my creative and personal ethos aren't compromised," said Medrano. "I'm not going to fit a box that I'm educated enough to know doesn't exist. Instead, I will claim the seat at the table that the generations of artists I'm representing on this album, while sometimes remaining in those boxes, made for me."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: On 'MexiAmericana,' Veronique Medrano re-examines country's Latin roots