Tex-Mex Faith: Paulino Bernal and the Pentecostalization of Tejano Music

In the 1950s, in the small dance halls of South Texas, a musical revolution of sorts began to take shape. “El Conjunto Bernal,” led by the brothers Paulino and Eloy Bernal, gained popularity within the Conjunto music scene with their unique style of three-part vocals and Paulino’s mastery of the accordion. In the late 1950s and 1960s their grassroots popularity made them one of the most commercially profitable Conjunto bands in South Texas and throughout the Southwest. In 1972, beset with drug and alcohol problems, Paulino Bernal became a “born-again” Christian and established Bernal Christian Records. Bernal was not the first to sing Conjunto infused Gospel music, but his knowledge of the recording industry and his own popularity made him an instant hit among Mexican American Pentecostals. Churches where instruments were not welcome or where Conjunto rhythms were thought to be of the “devil” quickly changed their tune as Bernal was now “tocando para Cristo.”  This paper explores the musical rhythms and religious overtones in the repertoire of the South Texas musician Paulino Bernal, who in the 1960s helped lead the transformation of Mexican American and Latino/a religious music.