Star of ‘Conjunto’ Music Wary of Limelight After Long Years of Obscurity : The Arts: Santiago Almeida, 81, won a $10,000 NEA grant as a Heritage Fellow this year. After his popularity faded in the ‘40s, he became a migrant worker in Washington state.

Guitarist Santiago Almeida dropped so far off the musical map that many fans of his “conjunto” music thought he was dead.

The hands that once coaxed fast-paced dance music from a 12-string guitar later spent decades picking apples in the Yakima Valley.

These days, after decades of obscurity, Almeida is suddenly piling up awards and recognition.

He recently received a $10,000 award from the National Endowment for the Arts as a National Heritage Fellow. He was among 12 recipients this year, and the first ever from Washington state.

“I am ready,” Almeida said recently in broken English. “But I don’t promise if something happens.”

Almeida, 81, said he is in poor health, suffers from heart problems and has difficulty playing the 12-string bajo sexto guitar that made him famous.

Although he thinks modern music has passed him by, others say his contributions are timeless. The NEA calls conjunto “one of the most significant, original musical forms in the United States.”

The musical style began around the turn of the century, when accordions were introduced in Mexico. It was concentrated among the Mexican, German, Polish and Czech immigrants to South Texas.

Conjunto, a Spanish word for group, consists primarily of an accordion and the bajo sexto guitar. The music is primarily instrumental and resembles polkas and fast-paced Mexican dance music.

For a time, the form dominated the rural musical scene in northeastern Mexico and South Texas, where it had humble beginnings on the region’s ranches. Traditional musicians had disdain for it.

By the time he was 14, Almeida was playing with seven brothers in the traveling family orchestra. He met accordionist Narciso Martinez in 1934. The two became partners and the first major conjunto recording stars.

“The stylistic partnership of these two instruments was established largely through the seminal recordings of two musical partners, former National Heritage Fellow Narciso Martinez and bajo sexto player and innovator, Santiago Almeida,” the NEA said.

Martinez, who abandoned a full-time music career to work as a truck driver and caretaker at a zoo in Brownsville, Tex., was named an NEA fellow in 1983. He also was nominated for a Grammy several years ago for a collection of his old works. He died last year in San Benito, Tex.

Few have matched the guitar technique and creativity of Almeida, the NEA said.

He and Martinez made what is considered the first conjunto recording in 1935 in San Antonio, with the polkas “La Chicharronera” and “El Tronconal.”

They went on to record more than 60 albums together--up to 20 songs in a single session--and performed at dances, mostly in South Texas.

(Arhoolie Records of El Cerrito, Calif., recently issued a new compact disc, available by mail, containing conjunto music by Almeida and Martinez.)

The popularity of the music waned in the 1940s, so Almeida looked for steadier work. With his wife and three children, he traveled north as part of the migrant-farm worker stream.

The family arrived in Sunnyside in 1950 and settled into a life of picking apples, cutting asparagus and weeding sugar beets.

About one-fourth of Yakima Valley’s residents are Hispanic; concerts of Mexican music are common.

For years, Almeida performed at dances, parties and in church, and taught young musicians conjunto music.

The musical world, however, lost track of him. “A lot of people thought he had died, quite frankly,” said Dan Sheehy of the NEA in Washington.

Almeida was located in the late 1980s by a researcher for the Washington State Arts Commission, who was doing a survey of Mexican-American music.

Since then, honors have flowed in. He was elected to the Conjunto Hall of Fame in San Antonio in 1987. This year he was honored at the San Antonio Conjunto Festival and won the Governor’s Heritage Award in Washington state.

But Almeida is wary of recognition. He does not like to be interviewed and is spare with information.

He no longer has a “crew,” he said, referring to backup musicians.

“My brothers passed away,” Almeida said. “It’s just me and the bajo and that’s all.”

Nonetheless, the new attention is a pleasant surprise.

“This is a great honor because I come from a poor migrant family and now I am being honored by the President of the United States.”