BROWNSVILLE — Conjunto music legend Alfredo “Freddie” Gomez will be honored at the 10th annual Labor Day Weekend Freddie Gomez Memorial Conjunto Concert at the Broken Sprocket music venue/food truck park/watering hole on Sept. 5.
Broken Sprocket’s Gomez mural will be unveiled during the event, which will also pay tribute to the late George Ramirez, a passionate cultural champion for Brownsville who died in 2019. He founded the Brownsville Society for the Performing Arts and the Brownsville Latin Jazz Festival, and was the driving force behind the Brownsville-George Ramirez Performing Arts Academy downtown. Ramirez’s family will be presented with the South Texas Conjunto Association Brownsville Chapter’s Freddie Gomez Conjunto Ambassador Award.
Admission to the memorial concert is free. The event runs from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. but starts with a DJ mix of Gomez’s music from 5-6 p.m. followed by the memorial ceremony, lifetime achievement awards to local musicians, a youth musician performance and “non-stop conjunto dance contest,” according to organizers. Public dancing begins at 7 p.m. with Fruty Villarreal, then continues with Juan Antonio Tapia at 8 p.m. La Tradicion Carranza takes the stage at 9 p.m. Ramon Lucio closes out the evening from 10 p.m. to midnight.
Freddie Gomez, known as El Ciclon del Valle, was born near Los Indios in 1932 and died in Brownsville in 2005. According to a biography on the Discogs music website, Gomez first picked up a guitar at age 6 and after honing his playing over many years in San Benito joined the band of conjunto icon Ruben Vela in 1958.
STCA President Lupe Saenz said Gomez soon started his own band, Freddie Gomez y Los Dinamicos, and is credited with introducing the electric guitar to conjunto music, though he’s known as well for his distinctive singing and bass playing. Gomez remains an inspiration to today’s young conjunto artists, Saenz said.
“ He was a unique type of musician who had a unique voice and style,” he said. “There hasn’t been another one to sing like him, to do what he did. He was one of the trendsetters, one of the pioneers in conjunto.”
Gomez’s music career peaked in the late 1960s and he ceased performing professionally in the early 1970s.
“I think he went to work,” Saenz said. “He got a job. Once you get a full time job you don’t play much anymore.”
This weekend’s memorial concert will be the first in two years and is taking place in a different venue this time. Normally the concert is held on Levee Street in downtown Brownsville, but was cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic, Saenz said. STCA planned to skip it this year as well until it was discovered that Broken Sprocket had the Gomez mural.
“It’s not the full event we always have,” Saenz said. “It’s going to be a miniature of it, but it’s going to be the event, the Freddie Gomez Memorial Festival. We decided to hold it there because of the mural.”
The concert will also pay tribute to Brownsville native Cande Aguilar Jr., who played bass in Gilberto Perez’s band for many years. Perez and Gomez played together in Vela’s band before Gomez went out on his own, and Perez was technically the first to play electric guitar in conjunto (with Vela) though Gomez took it a much further, Saenz said.
“(Gomez) was known for doing polkas with the electric guitar and playing the rhythm sound with the guitar rather than the accordion,” he said.
Saenz said Gomez adapted the technique from rock ‘n’ roll.
The STCA was founded in 1998 in Mercedes and now has chapters in Austin, Corpus Christi, Houston, Laredo and San Antonio in addition to Brownsville, where the local chapter is named for Gomez. Some may argue that the music originated in Mexico, though that’s not true, Saenz said. The birthplace of conjunto is actually La Paloma, Texas, off U.S. 281 just up the road from Brownsville. Narciso Martinez was the originator and has a cultural arts center in San Benito named after him.
As for the music itself, Saenz describes it as “an ensemble of instruments that complement each other.”
“For example, in conjunto the rhythm of the bajo sexto, it’s in step with the snare of the drums, and the bass, it’s in step with the bass drum,” he said. “That gives the heartbeat to the conjunto music.”
IF YOU GO:
What: 10th Annual Freddie Gomez Memorial Concert
Where: Broken Sprocket, 6305 Paredes Line Road in Brownsville.
When: Starting at 5 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 5
Cost: Free
Info: (956) 545-0295
