Music adds cultural continuity to any immigrant group's national, religious, and family celebrations. Like other immigrant groups, Mexican immigrants continued their musical traditions once they moved to the United States. The influence of music traditions from Mexico, particularly regional music, has always played an important role in the lives of Mexican immigrants. Music, according to anthropologists, reflects the cultural worlds of any group. An immigrant group's musical heritage represents an important factor in the group's maintenance of national and cultural identity within the larger American society.
             Throughout Mexican immigrant communities in the United States, distinctively Mexican music styles continue to flourish. Although a diversity of musical styles eventually develops within all immigrant groups, traditional music usually continues within a specific sector of the immigrant community. "Musica Nortena" (music from the north of Mexico) represents one of the major and most recognizable styles of music from Mexico. Musica nortena refers to a music genre that originated in the northern states of Mexico such as Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, and Chihuahua, and along the U.S.-Mexico border states, particularly Texas. From the earliest phases in their immigrant history, Mexican immigrants brought musica nortena with them to their new communities in the U.S. where the music evolved within their communities, blending new elements with those of the past.
             Musica nortena can be traced back to the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century. Mexican musicians and songwriters built on the influence of
             German immigrants who brought their distinctive music styles with them from Germany in the nineteenth century to South Texas and Northern Mexico. Within their communities, Germans listened and danced to German polkas and mazurkas. Immigrants from Germany introduced the accordion to their new homel...