Hinojosa Reveals a Voice of Pure Substance

Mystery matters to Tish Hinojosa. Her new album, “Dreaming From the Labyrinth,” reaches toward it, seeking to touch its essence by using sheer melodic beauty as a medium.

Mystique--which has to do with image, not essence--is something Hinojosa lacks utterly, which is why it’s no mystery that this tremendously gifted and uncommonly diverse singer-songwriter from Texas has remained a cult item since her 1989 national debut.

Hinojosa’s lack of mystique has nothing to do with blandness. It has to do with a complete rejection of overt artifice, pretense and inflated gesture.

On Tuesday at the Galaxy Theatre in Santa Ana, Hinojosa did not use songs as vehicles to advance an image, an ego, a persona, a career. She subsumed herself in the thematic substance and graceful flow of her music--an act of great purity made possible by her rare purity of voice.

Here was an artist--singing in English and Spanish and backed by a guitarist and a keyboards-accordion player--who trusted that her songs were meaningful and graceful, that her voice was lovely and that nothing more would be needed to reach her audience.

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She was right. The gathering of 150 or so fans was enthralled, both by the eight-song sequence of “Labyrinth”-ine mysteries and the earthy folk-rock, country and Tex-Mex music that followed.