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As Emilio Navaira Y Su Grupo Rio Amble onstage, the Austin deejay stops spinning records and the dancers squeal and push to the front. By the time the way-cool Navaira--the tejano star most likely to succeed--is halfway through his first number, almost everyone has stopped dancing and is instead packed around the lip of the stage, fixated on the throb in Navaira's voice and the swagger in his hips as he forges through a loud, aggressive set of polkas, Spanish-language rock, and English-language country and blues.
A youthful 31 years old, Navaira is poised for the biggest step in his career-making the musical crossover from his hybrid brand of tejano (the catchall term in this state for Mexican American music) to country. If the switch works, somewhere down the line he could go global. In the nearly six years since Navaira left David Lee Garza y los Musicales to front his own band, his hard-rocking music, which has been called everything from progressive conjunto (conjunto being the accordion-based traditional music of Spanish-speaking Texans) to pop polka, has won almost every Tejano Music Award and been nominated for two Grammys. His live performances draw crowds in all parts of the state. Having reached the top of a scene that has been growing steadily for a decade, he's ready and able to make the tricky switch. His barely accented voice, which trades a touch of tejano's buttery smoothness for a tad of country's nasal graininess, remains his meal ticket. His image couldn't be more perfect: His neatly pressed Wranglers, huge belt buckle, Western shirt, and white hat have led some to call him the tejano George Strait, and he definitely has Strait's way with a female audience.
Navaira does have competition, even predecessors, in the crossover sweepstakes. Singer Freddy Fender and accordionist Flaco Jimenez have both hit the pop market as members of the Texas Tornados, but Fender, who was also a country star in the seventies, is the only solo act to make the leap since the term "tejano" was coined. (Johnny Rodriguez became a seventies country star without passing through the tejano market, as Rick Trevio is attempting to do now.)
Another contender is Selena, a Corpus Christi singer who with her high-energy, danceable cumbias...