\n<\/p>\n
Flaco Jim\u00e9nez, master of the accordion and pioneer of tejano music, has died at the age of 86.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is with great sadness that we share tonight the loss of our father, Flaco Jimenez,\u201d reads a post from his family on Facebook. \u201cHe was surrounded by his loved ones and will be missed immensely. Thank you to all of his fans and friends \u2013 those who cherished his music. And a big thank you for all of the memories. His legacy will live on through his music and all of his fans.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cause of death is unknown but a January post from his family stated that he was \u201cin the hospital facing a medical hurdle\u201d.<\/p>\n
According to his son Arturo, his last words were \u201cYa estoy cansado<\/em>\u201d, which translates to \u201cI\u2019m tired.\u201d<\/p>\n Jim\u00e9nez won six Grammy awards in his career, including for country instrumental performance and tejano music performance, and a lifetime achievement award in 2015. \u201cThis one, the lifetime achievement, is top of the line,\u201d he said at the time. \u201cYou can\u2019t go higher than that one.\u201d<\/p>\n His sound was instrumental in defining tejano and conjunto music. The Guardian\u2019s Piper LeMoine wrote that \u201cthe soundtrack of the American south-west would be incomplete\u201d without these two genres.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way I learned to play the accordion was on the wild and happy side, much like Cajun and zydeco music,\u201d he once said in an interview. \u201cOne of my early idols was Clifton Chenier. The way he played, it was like the accordion was yelling at you: hey, take this. I like to make my accordion yell and scream and make it happy.\u201d<\/p>\n After performing in San Antonio in the 1960s, Jim\u00e9nez went to New York City and worked with artists including Bob Dylan, Carlos Santana, Willie Nelson and the Rolling Stones.<\/p>\n His first solo album was released in 1972 and he would go on to record more than 25 in his career.<\/p>\n A tribute was paid by Cesar Rosas, a member of Los Lobos who worked with Jim\u00e9nez on the song Don\u2019t Worry Baby.<\/p>\n \u201cNot only was Flaco my musical mentor, but he was also a dear friend to all of us Los Lobos,\u201d Rosas said to the San Antonio Express-News. \u201cHe was such a musical influence on me that [he] made me run out and buy a bajo sexto and start using it in my band. He will forever be in my heart. What a tremendous loss.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Flaco Jim\u00e9nez, master of the accordion and pioneer of tejano music, has died at the age of 86. \u201cIt is with great sadness that we share tonight the loss of our father, Flaco Jimenez,\u201d reads a post from his family on Facebook. \u201cHe was surrounded by his loved ones and will be missed immensely. Thank<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[7259,2527,7256,7258,7257,2011,686,7260],"class_list":{"0":"post-13582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-awardwinning","9":"tag-dies","10":"tag-flaco","11":"tag-grammy","12":"tag-jimenez","13":"tag-legend","14":"tag-music","15":"tag-tejano"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}