Gerardo Tamez: My work has meaning; it is a necessary part of our culture.

▲ Gerardo Tamez Domínguez was recognized in the Fine Arts category; the awards ceremony will be held on July 22nd in the Manuel M. Ponce Hall of the Palace of Fine Arts. Photo by María Luisa Severiano

Angel Vargas

La Jornada Newspaper, Saturday, July 19, 2025, p. 2

The question seems to take him by surprise. He snorts, and there's a silence. The only one in the conversation. For a few seconds, he looks analytically within himself, until he answers with a slight smile: "Was it worth it to dedicate my life to music?" "Of course it was!" It may sound a little corny, but I believe my work and what I've done have meaning. I feel they're a necessary part of society, of our culture .

This concludes the nearly hour-long interview that Gerardo Tamez Domínguez gave to La Jornada on the occasion of receiving the 2024 National Prize for Arts and Literature, in the Fine Arts category, whose ceremony—he was told—will take place on July 22 in the Manuel M. Ponce Hall of the Palacio de Bellas Artes.

The composer, guitarist, arranger, and teacher, born in 1948 in Chicago, United States, accepts this award—the highest distinction bestowed by the Mexican State upon its creators —with great pleasure, surprise, and gratitude. Furthermore, it comes as I celebrate 60 years of career. So, it comes at a good time. I'm happy .

It is a triumph of roots music , he maintains, since through him we once again recognize a very specific aspect of the vast Mexican musical universe: that where the academic and the popular converge.

Previously, he recalls, the same had been done with his fellow composers Arturo Márquez in 2009; Gabriela Ortiz in 2016; and in 2013 with Javier Álvarez, who died in 2023, about whom little is known since he was also a jaranero.

What I've done is a small step, but I feel it makes sense. I can say that my work has been well received and has had a good response; although, equally, there have been times when it may not have. But, overall, it's gone quite well for me.

He thus rejects the idea that the romantic notion of the misunderstood artist applies to him: "Perhaps at some point that was my case; suddenly, I felt like it wasn't the right path, because what I was doing didn't fit into the movement that many of my contemporaries were following: avant-garde music. But when I was doing it, it didn't feel natural, nor did it feel right.

That doesn't mean I don't like it. Of course I like what others have done! But my language couldn't and can't be like that; it has to be my own. At some point, then, I did think that I wasn't well enough and that I shouldn't dedicate myself to music. Fortunately, it was a very brief period.

Rooted in folklore

Gerardo Tamez's attraction to and deep connection with traditional and popular music comes from his childhood. It is no coincidence that in the mid-1960s, while still a minor, he participated in the founding of Los Folkloristas, a legendary group dedicated to the research, performance, and dissemination of traditional Latin American music.

His maternal grandmother, who was the wife of the Mexican Consul General in Chicago, gave him his first musical lessons on the piano as a child, and also introduced him to the culture of our country.

Along with Beethoven and Bach sonatas, I've always listened to a lot of folk music. Even though I lived abroad, I immersed myself in its culture. My mother (Rosa Elena Domínguez) also sang, as did my aunt Milla Domínguez, who practically founded Los Folkloristas. When I started with that group, I was 17. That's why I say it's a six-decade career. I used to study classical guitar, but folklore has always been very important to me.

He even admits that what he has sought and found in this sonic genre is a form of grounding: “I was born in the United States, I lived there, and I moved around constantly. My family also split up, and I had to live for a while with my dad, another with my mom, then with my uncles or grandparents. I attended several schools, some private, others religious.

Now I realize: what I've always sought, deep down, is a sense of identity and belonging. That's what folk music represents to me. That's not to say I don't like jazz, rock, or other genres, but, from a social perspective, that music is a very important source of inspiration in my life and in my writing.

The composer and concert artist denies that this transition between academic and popular music creates conflict for him, nor does merging them into a single proposal.

In the end, they're part of the same thing. On the one hand, we absorb our roots, and many of them are rural, peasant, but on the other, we're urban, contemporary, exposed to the internet, social media, and the modern world.

He describes his training as amphibious : with one foot in the academic rigor of the conservatory and the other in the oral tradition of folk music. He criticizes the disdain to which the latter has been subjected for years in music education centers, although he acknowledges that some schools are beginning to include it, perhaps not as a required subject, he says, but it is a step forward.

If young people are looking to become pianists or violinists in classical music, it makes perfect sense to also expose them to popular and traditional music. These are expressions from which many of the great composers have drawn.

Gerardo Tamez celebrates the fact that Mexico currently enjoys great freedom and openness in musical terms, and as part of this, the importance of traditional and popular music among the new generations of artists and students of the field.

Young people training at conservatories today have a genuine interest and special sensitivity toward this music. Now it's allowed, it already has the approval of the academy. What's happening in Mexican music is wonderful , he emphasizes.

Of course, I see that it's still a very Europeanized education, but there's also an openness to music that's more connected to our culture. Our roots are now taken more seriously.

–Do you see a positive change in music education in the country?

–As for the academy, yes, because the European framework no longer weighs as heavily; it's no longer a mold. In fact, many are breaking away from it, and in a very healthy way. But, of course, giving full credit to European music theory, composers, and teachers who gave us a very good foundation. In the end, we are bearers and creators of Western music, because that's our culture. I also see interest in expressions from other places; we live in a better-connected society and we learn about everything that's happening in the world.

Also the founder of the Mexico City Guitar Terceto and the Tierra Mestiza Ensemble, which celebrates its twentieth anniversary in 2025, the author of emblematic works in the national repertoire, such as Tierra Mestiza, clarifies that although his music is more within the traditional vein, this does not mean that he is unaware of contemporary languages or that he has not used them in his work.

It's a matter of being genuine, of seeking authenticity. When I compose, it's like taking a photograph of what I'm experiencing in the moment. My work is, therefore, somewhat autobiographical.

The conversation continues, and among other things, the maestro talks about his timid flirtation with rock music in his early youth, his studies in acting and his temporary practice of that profession, as well as his unpublished opera, Two Worlds, written in 1992 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the European arrival in America.

▲ Five of New York City’s most iconic dance companies—Ballet Hispanico, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, and Dance Theatre of Harlem—will unite on stage from July 29 to August 2 to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the BAAND Together Dance Festival at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater. American Ballet Theatre dancer Gillian Murphy (pictured) performs Jerome Robbins’ Other Dances during the festival’s third edition. In this iteration, the company will offer Midnight Pas de Deux, an introspective and poetic duet set to the adagio from Alessandro Marcello’s Oboe Concerto in D minor, with choreography by American Ballet Theatre Artistic Director Susan Jaffe. Photo Ap

La Jornada Newspaper, Saturday, July 19, 2025, p. 3