Every now ‘n’ again, you just wanna slap a disc into the machine that’ll make you forget that we live in an impossibly, insanely complicated world. But at the same time you don’t want assembly-line pap, but rather music that has ROOTS, roots in Tradition(s) that’s are firmly in the temporal plane, roots in culture(s) both immediate and obscure, stuff overlooked by the mainstream yet never goes quietly into That Good (or mediocre) Night of History’s Dustbin. This platter is one such disc, an album of folk-rooted, good-time party/dance music known alternately as conjunto and Tex-Mex, a unique form of "fusion" peculiar to the American Southwest. Conjunto is a musical stew comprised of traditional Mexican folk, Southwestern American "cowboy" balladry and German polka, spiced with country music with a pinch of the blues, and has a solid, get-up beat to help dancers along. This Mingo Saldivar fellow serves up a healthy, funky portion of same, a rollicking, soulful slice of ebullient oom-pa-pa sung mostly in Spanish, but performed with such gusto you’ll soon cease worrying about the language "barrier." Saldivar’s genially rough-hewn voice is as big and dusty as the Texas plains and as honest as the foam on top of your brew of choice, and the playing (accordion, bajo sexto, bass, drums, harmonica) is clean and zesty throughout. If your "party music" of choice encompases Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Flaco Jimenez, Ry Cooder, Doug Sahm, Chifton Chenier, Buckwheat Zydeco and/or Jimmy Sturr, you owe it to yourself to get to this.