Introducing Alejandro

Alejandro Urbina Diaz is a bassist, composer and ensemble performer based in Manchester. Born in Mexico, he studied in the flamenco tradition at a music school in Mexico City before coming to the UK to expand the horizons of his music-making. Alejandro is now in his third year studying the Popular Music course at the Royal Northern College of Music, and is inspired by the concepts of global unity and physical landscape in the music he creates for fusion ensembles. 

“I want to have different ensembles that represent this worldview of unity, so that's my main goal right now, and just being a performer with flamenco guitar and flamenco bass, but also with just the variety of genres within popular music.”

Alejandro’s Musical Journey

As a child growing up South of Mexico City to Mexican and American parents, Alejandro was able to explore his emerging musical interests, and learned bass and piano. It was the influence of his music professor, a Cuban-Armenian flamenco guitarist, that changed the trajectory of his playing:

“It has been a really interesting journey, because I never thought I'd end up studying flamenco out of all world music. I had been playing bass when I was young, just as a hobby, I played piano when I was younger as well. This was all because of my parents, they were trying to make me do all the things I could, so I could choose and grow as a person. Well, thanks to that I was able to focus on music, really.”

In addition to learning in the Paco De Lucia school of Flamenco technique, Alejandro’s teacher created new methods of percussive flamenco playing on guitar that Alejandro was encouraged to translate onto the bass guitar, in order to create his own musical style: 

 “[My teacher] made a whole vocabulary around percussion, and percussive movements that you can do all over the body of the guitar. So I learned this technique with his method, he made some music for this method, he insisted that it was the future, playing for some type of fusion guitar, because it meant that you'd have to do three things at once, which would be to play with accompaniment, rhythm and also a melody within the piece. So it was a very interesting proposal, and I studied it then he encouraged me to play it on the bass guitar. So I ended up investing in [my] bass.”

Through this Flamenco tutellege, Alejandro enrolled at a music school in Mexico City where he studied between the ages of 18-22. The course, although demanding, gave him significant grounding in the flamenco and musical fusion practices he is still involved in today:

“I engaged in a course that was very intensive- it was Monday to Saturday, 7am to 8pm…. I think it was 15 days, like proper holidays [off] a year. So it was really intense, but I learned a lot about recording and producing, mainly flamenco guitar and the fusion guitar technique, those were the subjects I was interested in developing.”

After graduating from the music school, Alejandro wanted to continue his musical education, and found that in his field of musical performance the opportunities he needed were more accessible to him outside of Mexico:

“In Mexico, the situation with music is a bit more complicated than in the UK. There isn't a lot of funding for the arts, so it is not as common to find regular places, regular gigs at places… Here [in the UK], it's more of a common thing. So that is one of the struggles that I did have in Mexico, and that’s why I chose to come to the UK and study.”

At 23, Alejandro began studying at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester on the Popular Music Course. Although he applied and was accepted to other music schools across the world, he found Manchester as a place to be the the most appealing in terms of its atmosphere as a city:

“I thought about applying to the UK to a range of universities, I also applied to Berklee College of Music and I also got an offer, but I felt that Manchester was a more adequate place- I went to Boston, and I prefer the ambience in Manchester, it was a lot friendlier and welcoming.”

Flamenco in Mexico 

As a Mexican person performing Flamenco music, Alejandro is situated in an unusual position as playing music from an originally Spanish tradition in a country that was colonised by the Spanish. He notes that unlike other aspects of Spanish culture that have become enmeshed with pre-hispanic Mexico, there is not an overwhelming flamenco influence in Mexican music, but similarities remain in the emotional intensity of both Spanish and Mexican music and dance:

“Flamenco doesn't have like a very big presence in Mexico, but it is there- the influence keeps growing. But I think that the main connection from Flamenco to Latin American music is that when the Spanish conquered Mexico, obviously they had their own musicians, like music in Mexico, you know, that they brought with them… And then people in Mexico made their own version of it… Flamenco relates to Latin American music as well in the sense that it is very existential music. For example, flamencos believe that when you play flamenco, you must give your all - it's very related to death, for example, in the sense of being aware of the fact that death is there, and then so you should give your all in every moment. So that's why Flamenco music is so passionate - for example, that type of passion in Latin American music is more put in the sense of, “we will dance”. If you have any problem, we will dance. Like, if you’re in pain, we’re gonna dance, like it's a very affirmative thing. You know, it's, it's kind of like, like carefree. So I guess it kind of has that relationship, of giving your role in that moment. Because life is, you have to kind of just be okay with with life, like realise that it is beautiful, and that it hurts, and that you can dance to it, when you're feeling bad - you can dance and it will be fine.”

Unity as a Musical Purpose

Through his own musical background and education, Alejandro has experienced the therapeutic role that music can play in people’s lives as a means of expressing emotions - this has driven his own creative process of composition, as he writes music with the intention of creating messages of unity among people from different walks of life through writing music for world fusion ensembles.

“[Music] allows us to realise the transcendence of life, that helps us cope with a lot of things. Like specific emotions, and stuff that we already know that music does. So I came up with the idea of trying to give a message to people in the current society of unity, I know that everywhere is chaos.”

Alejandro has also found that mythology plays an important role in this musical driving force, as the idea of a global mythology relates closely to the messages he hopes to convey in his own music: 
 

“I was very inspired by a scholar of comparative mythology that has now passed away - his name was Joseph Campbell. And he made an incredible work about the monomyth, he called it the monomyth because he described the world as having the same myths in every culture. So the same myths regarding the same elements, the same kind of world view, kind of the same development… In his lectures, there's a great series that is called the power of myth… He just talked about the many symbols of human life, you know, from the circle to the square, to the sun, going to the Indian chakras, the days of the week and stuff like that. At some point, being asked about what would happen in the future, he said that humanity would undoubtedly fall into having to develop a world mythology, a new world mythology. And he was saying that it was going to be probably mythology, that would be towards helping the earth, so like a world mythology, in that sense. Because we're all just kind of slowly realising that we're all in this planet together, and that we're gonna have to make it together… So I think it was very inspired by that particular comment on that series… In Mexico, like in every other place, there's corruption, and there's things going on that are prompting people to get together and kind of have a more defined sense of justice, to then fight for justice and become more united. And I think that mainly is my drive - coming from Mexico, coming from this point of like, it's pointless to argue with each other and kind of to fight with each other. We need to realise that we need to build community and just relate to each other because we're both human. And so I think that's the main drive for for my music, basically.”

Alejandro has also found that living in Manchester has been an invaluable experience in working towards musical messages of unity thanks to the diversity of the city:

“It's been really helpful actually coming to Manchester, because meeting so many people around the world, I've been told about the problems that are in their communities. It gave me a perspective of, we're kind of everybody's kind of living the same thing but in their own culture. So towards that, I was making music towards that feeling of unity, in the sense of we are all human beings. So that was, that was interesting - I think that's why I also chose Manchester because it was really friendly.”
 

Landscape, Language and Cultural Diversity

Meeting Manchester’s many diasporic populations and experiencing its diversity of culture has formed great impressions on Alejandro, both in a musical sense and on an individual level:

“The city is very welcoming- I think it's also very different to Mexico in the sense of the international presence of cultures. In Mexico, there's a lot of Mexicans [laughs]. There's a few foreigners [in] certain areas, there's like a Chinatown as well… That was one of the things that in Manchester was just like mind blowing for me, it was just like, you know, cultures are just within a metre. So that was really interesting for my development as a person and as a musician, because it opened me up to two cultures that in Mexico, for example, we don't have we don't have Asian cultures as close as the UK has. So that just was very different for, for me to be able to kind of peek into that window of that culture, and learn something about it. Yeah, I think that's why I chose Manchester - I don't know there's, there's something about it [laughs].”

Alejandro has found Manchester and Mexico City to be vastly different, not only in terms of the populations of people that live there, but also in terms of their respective landscapes. 

“I grew up in Mexico City [federal district], south of the city. The city is pretty interesting because it has a weird blend of architecture- it comes from pre-colonial times, and then you've got different Aztec and Mayan ruins and temples, and then you've got the colonial times, which includes Colonial Spanish architecture, which is a bit like, looks like a little town kind of. And then you've got a more modern twist. So like, the city, especially Mexico City, has this blend because Mexico had a golden age where there was a lot of progress in music and art, and in general… In Spanish the movement was called Estridentismo, which was categorised for being like, really colourful and extravagant - Frida Kahlo, for example, comes from that movement. Mexico City is a weird surreal blend of like, we've got Gothic architecture as well, but modern Gothic. So I grew up south of Mexico City, with those landscapes.”

As well as the influence of the architecture of Mexico City, Alejandro considers the climate of the region and the connection that indigneous Mexican culture has to nature to have also formed an impression on his musical influences and writing styles:

“The landscapes in Mexico, it wasn't until I came to Manchester that I realised how green [Mexico] is actually… Especially because Mexico City is at the middle of the Republic, so there is tropical weather, it is hot, but it's humid hot, it's not dry. And it's not as hot as Northern Mexico… So those landscapes are very tropical, and they have loads of trees. I think that really influenced my music, because it connects with this pre-Hispanic culture phenomenon, which is the whole indigenous movement of relating to nature… So I think that's why I like a lot of tropical sounding music, I guess, what’s where my appeal to Latin American music comes from. Because the city is very green, Mexico is very filled with trees. And I think that's where the [indigenous] mythology [comes from].”

The contrast between Mexican landscape, architecture and climate to the UK has also been a source of musical inspiration for Alejandro, both from his new found experiences of living in the UK, and from his existing understanding of the UK from his mother’s family, who are Americans with Celtic heritage.

“I think I did bring some of my landscapes to here, but I’ve got to say that before coming to the UK, I had always been enamoured with the whole UK castle, landscape thing, you know? My family from my father's side, they're all from south of Mexico… And I think there's a bit of Spanish with Mexican from my mother's side, but they [originally] came from Ireland and Scotland. They migrated to the US ages ago… So for example, that was very interesting, I had already had a preview of like, what was the culture in the UK. So when I came here, and I saw the landscapes with my eyes, I think it really influenced me, because of the quiet that you can find in UK natural reserves, I guess. Open space and like plains, hills… And I think this hill-like landscape was really eye-opening for me because in Mexico it’s different - we have valleys… But [here] you can traverse the hills as long as you want, and it's beautiful. So I think that that part of the UK… Kind of gave me a sense of maybe calm or tranquillity. I don't know, the hills are really calming. There's a sense of even with the air, you know, just hitting you with full speed, it's a very interesting sensation. We don't really have those landscapes in Mexico.”

Another startling contrast in British culture Alejandro has experienced is through language - although he is fluent in English, he has found that many of his preconceptions of English dialect have been disproved after moving to the UK. He has found, however, that Manchester has been a welcoming place where he’s felt able to explore aspects of British culture.

“[The language] for me was a complete change, I had a proper culture shock. Because my family came from the US, from my mother's side, I learned English at an early age. Kind of like learning how to speak it, learning the grammar, naturally. And so when I came to the UK I was like, “okay… I know English! It’s got to be similar.” And [laughs] it totally wasn’t… In Mexico, we have this, this really narrow conception of what the UK is. To us, the UK is like, oh, castles and Harry Potter. That was, I think, very interesting to live the change of culture, having to learn different phrases, you know, different slang words [laughs]. It just, it was definitely a journey that I was very shook at first, because I was like, “oh, wow, I learned this whole other culture,” So that was really interesting. But at the same time, I think, because Manchester has just such a friendly atmosphere, people just helped me a lot, people were very understanding. Of course, it still happens that… My English kind of breaks a little, but people here are really supportive. There’s a certain kindness, I think that is like, very Manchester.”

Alejandro’s Future Projects

Alejandro plans to remain in Manchester for the foreseeable future, and to continue working on his musical fusion projects - notably, this includes a fusion world music ensemble he started with his friend Emilio, a friend he studied with in Mexico. Staying true to this purpose of unity, Alejandro’s aim in the ensemble is to feature many different world music artists in the ensemble to communicate different world struggles through music:

“I started in high school with [Emilio] in Mexico, we always had this dream of making a World Music Group, and now we’ve made it in the UK… I want to make this project like a bit bigger, but always with this concept of having feature artists from different places. And of course, it's not like it's, there's a preference for having more international members in the ensemble, rather than UK, it's more of, I want people to have their voice. In most Latin American countries right now, the problem is that people don't feel that their voice is being heard at all. You know, this is mainly because of the corruption within the country, you know, there's insecurity in some places. So I think that giving, giving people from around the world a chance to voice their, just their lives really… In the sense of look at what we can do together- we're all from different places, and we can do this thing, just by working together, you know, acknowledging our existence… That's kind of like what I want to do, to have always people coming into the ensemble, mixing these sound worlds, which, which are… What I want to do is like, proper fusion, so like…. Having a wide palette that we can use to paint different landscapes, like from popular music, to jazz, to more heavy rock, heavy genres, and then to electronic music - you know, have a chance to kind of show those rules together. Because I think that that's how our brain will work in the future- we already experienced so much fusion with our you know, gadgets… Our minds are colluded, kind of maybe with just so much information, but it is information that also you know, it is painting landscapes in yourself… And I think yeah, that's kind of like what I want the music to grow into -kind of going through all of these branches of human interactions, I guess human emotions, human experiences.”