The Mexican maestro with a mission

The Mexican maestro with a mission

Jorge Fuentes Ramirez has won prizes in Scotland for his classical guitar playing. His solo performances are a treat. But he’s a Mexican maestro with a mission.

“I love classical music,” he says. “But there are already so many outstanding guitarists in the world giving excellent performances of Bach and the established classical guitar repertoire that I felt I needed to offer something different to venues and audiences.”

So he often commissions music from composers driven by subjects that concern him too, and “who are related to the person I am”.

That person is rooted in the region of his birth, close to the US border, where unfortunately drug and gun smuggling, gangs, violence, migration and misogyny and poverty are part of the mix.

While studying at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, for example, he prepared a programme for a recital, Frontiers and Resonances: Mexican Music for Guitar, focused  on contemporary Mexican works that explore themes such as migration, cultural displacement, resilience, and identity.

“Several of the works address the human consequences of forced migration,” the publicity blurb proclaims, “the transformation of cultures through displacement, and the experiences of Mexican migrants navigating life beyond their homeland.”

If that sounds rather stilted and academic for such a passionate and emotional musician, consider this: at home in Mexico’s largest state, Chihuahua, he found the body of a man murdered by a drug cartel on the street outside his front door. He also remembers seeing a human head on the ground near his school. Which is why he smiled when, on arriving in Glasgow, he was advised by fellow students and lecturers not to live in the area of Govan because it was too rough.

Similarly, his commitment to improving the experiences of Mexican and other Hispanic migrants in, to and from from the US is based firmly on the experience of living next to Uncle Sam: “Politically it always ends up with this relationship, always ends up with geography. We are just too close to this enormous place, the US.”

How does he manage to combine his music and his humanitarian campaigning? His own music has no lyrics — his musicianship speaks for itself — but before he plays he talks to the audience about the thinking behind the pieces. His introductions can be as direct as a homage to Mexican mothers searching for the bodies of their murdered children or about the toxicity of US-Mexico relations.

He says he doesn’t want want to be only an entertainer. “That’s not what I’m looking for in my music. I want to create a certain reflection because the world is a hard place to live. I like my gigs to be a space where people grow, a complex process.” He describes keeping a balance between entertainment and reflection as “sometimes offering a pastry … and then I bring in the vegetables again.”

His course complete, 32-year-old Ramirez returns to Mexico this summer. He came to Glasgow in 2022 slightly unwillingly, firmly rooted in his home culture and community, his talent recognised at an early age following his musician father’s gift of a guitar at age 12 (“I wanted to be a rock star”), committed to helping his parents and siblings. But he was encouraged by a brother already studying in Scotland and won a full scholarship that made his stay financially feasible.

He has had to scrimp and save in Glasgow, living as cheaply as possible, earning a little here and there from performances and prizes. Whatever little spare cash came in went to support his parents.

He has only praise for the Scots: “Scottish people are so warm, so supportive,

“My main teacher here was so empathic about my culture. He helped me in many ways. With  transport, for example, he first lent me a bicycle and later gave it to me, which was extremely useful.

“Another staff member of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland invited me to stay at his home over Christmas so that I would not have to spend that period alone.”

Ramirez also created his own community across the various places he lived in, taking part in food collections for people in need. They started attending his gigs.

“People make Glasgow,” he says, before adding, “It’s quite cheesy to say that, but it’s true.”

Photo credit: Moises Rodriguez Alarcon