Dual Vocation. The Other Life of an Academic

Many academics at UNAM have, like I do, a double life. One of them is the one we unravel the most—institutionally speaking: it is that activity in which we did our postgraduate studies, in which we specialized, on which we have published articles and given classes. The other one has more to do with our personal, sometimes private, lives: it is usually related to arts or sports. This is what I’ve seen both in my family and in my work environment inside UNAM. An architect, specialized in pre-Columbian art, has published more poetry books than those about architecture; an odontologist has received more awards as a writer than as a dentist; an UNAM officer has conquered the top of more mountains than administrative offices in our university, besides swimming marathons in support of the breast cancer month; a director paints exquisite watercolors in his little spare time. A lot of us move in two different worlds. For me, that other world is music.

I studied at Mexico’s National Music Conservatory. My house was in a walking distance from The National School of Professional Studies (ENEP, Spanish initials) Acatlán, now known as Faculty of Higher Education (FES, Spanish initials), but they didn’t offer a bachelor’s degree in music. I had no intention of pursuing a career in music because I always knew how difficult it would be to make a living in this activity. And mainly because I always aspired to become a performer, not a teacher. To become the latter, one has to pursue another career, Music Pedagogy, which I was not keen on. When I finished high school, I opted to take a gap year in order to decide what I would study next. Two years before that, I started studying in the Conservatory because my piano teacher at a private academy told me I had to pursue a comprehensive education in music. So, I went to the Conservatory in the afternoons to study solfège, music history, and piano. During the year I was not studying at the university, I kept studying music, took German and French classes at ENEP Acatlán, and participated in a group of mountaineering besides practicing swimming. A year passed, and I couldn’t get to feel enthusiastic about any career path. Finally, I made up my mind: I would finish my bachelor’s degree in music. It takes ten years to get a degree in music. Yes, TEN years. The curriculum is exhaustive: solfège, harmony, musical analysis, chamber ensembles, sightreading, acoustics, history, counterpoint, musical forms, figured bass, choir, two languages… And, of course, your instrument. A French teacher comes to mind. She used to say: “Do they want pianists or musicologists at this school? I need you to play your instrument eight hours a day, not to study all that stuff.” But it was like that: eight semesters of solfège, same amount for harmony, and so forth. And the subjects were super tricky—one of the most challenging experiences I’ve had in my life.

My brother also studied in the Conservatory but decided to pursue a bachelor’s degree at UNAM. As a man, he felt greater social pressure to choose “a career from which he could make a living.” At least it was like this when I was younger. For a while, he tried to study both bachelor’s degrees at the same time: Piano and Actuarial Science (Applied Math); although he would’ve preferred to study pure Mathematics, he also felt that kind of pressure that he wouldn’t make much money out of it. And he did have vocation as a teacher—he’s always had it; he taught me a lot of things actually. After a while of taking classes in both degrees, he realized that it would be impossible for him to keep them both, so he stayed—in his own words—in the easiest one: Applied Math. Music requires too much time, dedication, study, skills, and all sorts of intelligence.

Nowadays, both my brother and I live two lives: the academic and the musical one. He is a researcher and professor at FES Acatlán, specialized in Statistics, Ph.D. in Mathematical Sciences, while I am a full-time professor at the Teaching Center for Foreigners (CEPE, Spanish initials), with a MD and a PhD in Linguistics, and an officer at UNAM since I work as an academic secretary at UNAMChicago. Neither my brother nor I could make a living of music in the making-money sense. But we live it in the expression’s most personal and spiritual sense.

If there’s something for which I thank my university, my colleagues, my students, my bosses, it is that they have always supported me so that I could incorporate a little of my musical life into my academic activities. When I write a report, I always include the concerts I’ve given, many of them expressly requested by my work colleagues and developed at university’s premises. In 2000, I gave my first concert at UNAM’s CEPE, for my classmates and teachers of the Spanish teacher training course. Since then, I’ve participated in a lot more concerts. Two of them that stand out, when I was invited by CEPE at Taxco to play the impressive historic organ of the magnificent and exuberant church of Santa Prisca. The first concert was part of an organ festival whose organizing committee included the director of that UNAM center in Taxco, and the second was part of the celebrations for its 25^th anniversary. I learned from Taxco’s community that UNAM plays a fundamental role in the preservation of this festival: it has been concerned with tuning the organ and organizing these concerts, always free of charge, of course, for the benefit of Taxco’s community who appreciates the musical heritage of their city. They let me know how much our university means to the city and how much it contributes to community development in many areas. Music is just one of them.

The most recent experience I’ve had giving a concert, one of the most meaningful experiences in my life, was once again offered to me by UNAM. The Institute for Aesthetics Research office in Oaxaca organized in May 2023 a huge event called Sacred Spaces. Thresholds and Frontiers, attended by academics from different parts of Mexico and the world. In cooperation with UNAM-Chicago, we looked for a way to include the topic of US’ Middle Eastern sacred spaces. Academics from Illinois University and The Newberry Library went to Oaxaca to participate in this event. When the program was put together, the organizers decided to include three cultural activities for attendees: an exhibition, a guided tour to Monte Albán, and a concert! They asked me if I knew about a historical organ in Tlacochahuaya, Oaxaca, about an hour from the capital. I did know about it because one of my music theory professors at the Conservatory is an organist, and he had produced a record after the organ’s restoration, 25 years ago. However, I had never had the chance to play it. I was asked if I would be willing to participate, acknowledging, of course, that there was no budget to finance my participation. I answered that I would be delighted and honored to do so. Still, I knew how complicated it would be to obtain permission to play a heritage instrument of historical and cultural value, and that is also located within a site that is of heritage and belongs to the Catholic Church. Fortunately, after a lot of work—surely more than the organizers originally thought—UNAM got the necessary permissions. For me, it also involved months of preparation on my nights and weekends where I could immerse myself in my favorite music: La Frescobalda, by Italian composer Girolamo Frescobaldi, a musician as important as J. S. Bach but who worked a century earlier; the Pavana Lachrimae, by Dutch composer J. P. Sweelinck, a mournful work that I dedicated internally to my father, whose death I had never been able to mourn; and a marvelous work by Spaniard composer Juan Cabanilles, which is a musical cathedral in itself and which connects us with the 17th century, the time when the extraordinary temple and former convent of Saint Jerónimo Tlacochahuaya was built.

In my life at UNAM, I’ve received several distinctions, among them two Alfonso Caso medals from the Postgraduate Program in Linguistics, which I treasure. But having played that historic organ has marked my life in such a profound way that I can hardly thank my university for the many life opportunities it has given me, for being able to earn a living with my work, and also for being able to share the music that, if it had not been for my musical studies, I would not have been able to know or disseminate.

Today I live in Chicago where I am in contact with the city’s migrant communities. This has brought me new experiences in the musical field. Although my musical education was centered on European music—because that is how music education is focused at the National Conservatory of Music where I studied, as well as in most of the music schools I have known in Mexico—I have always been sensitive to the traditional music of our country. I remember, 30 years ago, joining a friend who was studying folkloric dance at ENEP Acatlán, on a tour to Querétaro. The excitement of seeing her dancing “La Sandunga,” sones from Veracruz, and other wonders brought tears to my eyes. Aside from the visual treat, this music is always profound and powerful. I’d never had the chance to approach this kind of music as a performer until I arrived in Chicago, where I found intense musical activity, with diverse genres, but surprisingly also with Mexican music from different regions of our diverse country.

Here I’ve met people who have devoted their lives to disseminating music and invited me to dive into the world of traditional music. I started by taking guitar classes in order to sing Mexican songs in meetings with friends and colleagues so that music could relieve and comfort those who are far away from their home country. Then I had an unexpected opportunity to take marimba classes. This exquisite instrument presents the advantage of having the same configuration as the keyboard instruments I know. Technically is very different because, instead of using one’s fingers, one must use a special kind of drumsticks, called “bolillos”, like the Mexican type of bread, although you can’t eat them. A professor of K’iche’ Mayan origin, from whom I’ve learned yet another sad story of indigenous migrants in this country, has been teaching me for a year, religiously on Sundays. Since then, I’ve learned a small repertoire of ten pieces and been performing in different forums in which I’ve been invited to participate. This is especially true of the season known in the United States as Heritage Month, which runs from September 15 to October 15 and in which several activities are programmed to promote the cultures here called “Latino” (in Mexico we would call them “Latin American”).

I was used to playing classical music on the piano, the harpsichord, or the organ. Now, suddenly playing music for the marimba has opened me to a world of new possibilities. For example, making people dance when they feel the music in their bodies. From here, some of us remember the street marimba: the one that sets up on the sidewalks and waits for a few coins in exchange for some of the joy it transmits. Others remember it in the portals of some colonial village or town, where it sings and entertains us while we taste some regional dish. Marimba music allows us to fly back to the land where we were born and even feel the warmth of the sun in the middle of a harsh winter.

Playing this instrument has represented for me a new opportunity in life to bond with people from here and share our culture with Afro-Americans, Anglo-Saxons, and all kinds of communities that coexist in this multi-ethnic sanctuary city that is Chicago. I have learned that maintaining cultural ties with one’s country is vital for mental health. Once again, my co-workers are encouraging me to give a concert, now a marimba concert, as part of the UNAM-Chicago program, and nothing makes me happier than the opportunity to do so.

I am very grateful to Gerardo Reza for his careful reading and thoughtful comments on the final version of this text (author’s note).

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