FESTIVAL

Besame Mucho, Austin

March 2

Less than two years ago, Grupo Frontera was dishing out its blend of norteño and cumbia at weddings and other events in Edinburg, just north of McAllen, where the band’s six members were living and working day jobs. But after a string of hit singles and a collaboration last year with Bad Bunny on the track “un x100to,” which won a Latin Grammy, those days of relative anonymity outside the Rio Grande Valley are behind them. Now Grupo Frontera will be the biggest name repping the Lone Star State at Besame Mucho, a Los Angeles–based Latin music festival making its Texas debut, alongside norteño legends such as Banda El Recodo and Los Tigres del Norte.

TELEVISION

Girls5eva (Netflix)

March 14

This Tina Fey–produced comedy, which stars the Houston-raised Renée Elise Goldsberry and follows the now middle-aged members of a late-nineties one-hit-wonder girl group, debuted in 2021 on NBC’s Peacock. But though it drew near-unanimous critical acclaim across two seasons, the network canceled it in late 2022. Netflix quickly snapped it up and reunited the band for a third season and deservedly on a much bigger stage.

BOOK

Truckload of Art: The Life and Work of Terry Allen, by Brendan Greaves (Hachette) 

March 19

Critics often refer to artist and musician Terry Allen’s “cult” following. Problem is: fans include David Byrne, Guy Clark, Bob Dylan, and Texas’s greatest and sternest art critic, Dave Hickey, to whom Allen dedicated the honky-tonk staple “Amarillo Highway.” This authorized biography is 432 pages long, which might be just enough to capture his epic life. 

Exhibition

“THIS WAY: A Houston Group Show,” Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

Through March 24

Works by twelve Black artists reflect on the history and legacy of Freedmen’s Town (a.k.a. Fourth Ward), the city’s first settlement of freed Black people, which is today in the throes of rapid, disorienting gentrification. The brick motif across the show is intentional: after the City of Houston refused to pave the settlement’s streets, residents laid handcrafted bricks, which can still be seen today.    

This article originally appeared in the March 2024 issue of Texas Monthly with the headline “Four Reasons This Is a Great Month in Texas Culture.” Subscribe today.