Tish Hinojosa Connects With A Spiritual Dimension. By Pam Parrish GETTING YOUR HANDS on a new Tish Hinojosa album is a little bit like receiving a gift: You don't know what's inside, but you know it's going to be something good. Over a span of nine albums, Hinojosa has a reputation for a rootsy eclecticism that grows from her bicultural background and is tied together by her crystal-clear voice, thoughtful lyrics and gorgeous melodies. So it's something of a surprise to hear her latest work, Dreaming from the Labyrinth. It's more Enya than, say, Ronstadt, a richly atmospheric work whose dreamlike mood is underlined by often oblique lyrics against a lush instrumental background. The songs ride on wind and water, words playing on the differing textures of English and Spanish, casting an almost hypnotic spell. It has the pull of a full-moon tide. Hinojosa recorded Labyrinth mostly live, in an historic chapel in the heart of San Antonio, her hometown. (On Saturday, Hinojosa will perform at The Temple Of Music And Art.) Though she's touched on Labyrinth's style on earlier works, "this was just diving whole body into it," Hinojosa said from her home in Austin. "This is definitely a more thorough journey into a little fuller production--texture, vocals--ethereal, more atmospheric.... For me, it was a revisit to the connection with the spiritual world, I guess." Hinojosa found the album's title, from Octavio Paz's book of the same name, while she was recording Labyrinth. It was then she read Paz's work, along with a collection of Aztec poetry and the poem "Primero Sueño/The First Dream" by Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, a 17th-century Mexican nun. "The connection there is something that's really weird," said Hinojosa, speaking in enthusiastic cascades of words. "It could have been that I had read their works and then written the record. But what I did totally was write this material blindly" and only later became aware of the common themes. "Sometimes these things fall into place like pieces of a puzzle or clues to something that I didn't know I was looking for," Hinojosa laughed. "I'm reading all this work, and I'm realizing that a lot of the dream images of my songs, the back-and-forth between the languages, was a lot of what Octavio Paz was talking about--the cultural sleepiness of Mexican history. And a lot of the work of the Aztec poets had some beautiful imagery of dreams involved." Paz's work led her to Sor Juana, who was censured by the Catholic church for her views. Reading "Primero Sueño," Hinojosa said, "I just realized what an epic piece of literature that was. In such an oppressive surrounding like being a nun in a convent under the paternalistic Catholic church, and then being able to write this scientific, philosophical, extraterrestrial kind of..." she laughed, "I wonder what kind of drugs she was taking." The richness of the Southwestern U.S. and Mexican cultures has been an underlying theme in all Hinojosa's work, from her debut album Taos to Tennessee through her children's album Cada Niño and Frontejas, an exploration of Mexican-American roots music from conjunto to torch. (The latter two were released last year, along with reissues of Hinojosa's early work.) "Sometimes we get a really strange perception of the Mexican culture from things that make the news," she said, "about the whole border issue, about the poor people coming to look for work. Not taking away any of the seriousness of that issue"--about which Hinojosa has written eloquently in the past--"but...what I've always tried to explain or explore or express through my music is the depth of the cultural roots of this area." Returning to San Antonio was a chance for Hinojosa to reconnect with her own past--the 170-year-old chapel in which they recorded the album is down the street from where she went to school. It also gave co-producer Jim Ed Norman, Warner Bros.' Nashville label head, a chance to delve into what was for him a new culture while helping Hinojosa put together the album. "It was a wonderful thing, to get to go back there and to expose him to that cultural experience of that city.... Just locking ourselves in this beautiful chapel and being able to wear headphones but be able to look at each other, with the musicians. Everything fell right into place." Still recovering from the intensity of releasing the children's album and Labyrinth in the past year, Hinojosa isn't sure what musical style will beckon her next, though she is scoring a public television special on border architecture. "For every record that I've made, I can hear myself doing a follow-up to it," she said. "It's like a mine. As you were digging you found a lot more. That's happened with every form that I've explored of my passions of music.... That's the great part about not being classified or identified as a particular kind of artist. Because that does leave me more free to explore." As much as she loves to talk about her music, Hinojosa wondered if she was taking away some of its magic in her enthusiasm. "If someone runs into an artist who talks about their work, it seems premeditated," she said. "I'm really intrigued by the whole magic, and sometimes I feel like I say too much because I'm trying to make up for what I couldn't figure out. I want to be as respectful of the art as anybody else is, because I don't really know where it comes from. "When I was 20 years old I never would have dreamed that I would have done this 20 years later, because I didn't think I was capable of it. I never thought I'd be involved in the production of a record, writing the songs. Or having a family. All these things just become a part of the whole internal universe. So I like to keep myself a little bit out of the magical element, because there's certain things that I'm really still astounded by. I can still look at this record and go 'Wow!' " Tish Hinojosa performs at 8 p.m. Saturday, June 15, at The Temple Of Music And Art, 330 S. Scott Ave. Flutist Bill Miller opens the show. Tickets are $14 and $16 for reserved seating, with a $1 discount for TKMA members. Ticket outlets include Antigone Books, Loco Music and Hear's Music. Call 881-3947 or 327-4809 for tickets and information.

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