Yesterday, I heard the news of the death of someone dear to me in Mexico: the indigenous spiritual leader Marakame Uxatiki, Maestro Rosendo. We may never know the full details of his death, all that we do know is that it was brutal and that his young grandson was murdered alongside him. In my past four years living in Mexico—and perhaps never in my life—never would I meet a person so firmly rooted in their indigenous heritage: I recall Maestro Rosendo alighting a bus on a street corner and gleaming like a ray of light, dressed in his traditional clothing as pictured above; I remember him pacing the beaches of Zipolite deep in meditation; but most of all, our very first encounter is what stays with me—an encounter which inspired me and instilled a desperate thirst for knowledge and understanding such that I wonder whether my return to further study was not perhaps instigated to some extent by this man. Maestro Rosendo was a man who for me enveloped an overlapping embrace of a language and a culture on the very edge of extinction for so many centuries, whose understanding of the sanctity of the land and the sanctity of human love was articulated in his every word and gesture.

Before I first saw Maestro Rosendo, I heard him—and not without a sense of confusion and slight irritation. With a close friend, I had trekked through the woods for some time, before finally glimpsing what appeared to be sparks from a campfire dancing in the air on the edge of a small cliff: they were fireflies. Above was a dazzling set of constellations which lit up the scene below in a dim unearthly blue light: a small group of individuals sat in silent meditation in a circle around an unlit campfire. Scrambling rather ungracefully down to join the ceremonial circle, I gathered myself, presented myself to the guardian of the land, and took my place in the circle, slowly beginning to turn my thoughts inwards. I rotated my neck and shoulders to ease any tensions, which quickly and easily dissipated on that warm tropical evening. My breathing slowed to a tenth of the pace of its normal rhythm and I plunged into the profound collective silence of the circle. That was when I heard it…

At first, I wondered whether it was the buzzing of some kind of unusual insect due to its soft nasal qualities, but I then percieved a throatiness that was unmistakably human. Perhaps, it was even laughter? I looked around the circle, but the little that I could make out in the darkness gave no clue as to who was speaking, or whom they might be speaking to. And what language was this—a string of unfamiliar phonemes with its soft, shrill vowels and drawl? Huichol. It was then that I realised that this monologue punctuated by long silences was a phone call. And who would dare to take a phonecall in this sacred moment? The Marakame ended the call and addressed the group.

It was not until well after midnight that the Marakame began to sing. Like his speech, these ancestral songs, sometimes accompanied by a tiny, tinny violin-like instrument, othertimes by long cyclical anecdotes switching easily between Spanish and Huichol, were deeply moving on both an emotional and a physical level. For a moment, as I gazed into the now-blazing fire pit before me—Grandfather Fire, as we were encouraged to call it—my thoughts turned to my own ancestors, and most specifically my own grandfather.

I know so little of my grandfather; his memory remains taboo within my family. I have visited the once-thriving Jewish city of Bialystok in modern-day Poland, where his family once lived and where churches now stand in the stead of synagogues. I have walked the streets of Whitechapel, where his parents would first have arrived and where his father also died an untimely death, possibly also by his own hand. But it was only when I began to sing the songs of my forebears in his mother tongue, Yiddish, and explore their complex stories and melodies that I began to truly gain a sense of that cultural heritage which has been all but erased from living memory. Singing around a warm stove with friends in an East End community centre at which almost a century earlier my ancestors may well have done the same, past which would also have marched Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts.

Mayn Rue-Plats (My Resting Place) possesses a haunting melody, whose melancholy occasionally soars sublimely only at the suggestion that in death we all reach a place of togetherness and peace. Dray Schvester  (Thre Sisters) is a song sung in ambiguous but urgent whispers, describing the struggles of three immigrant Jewish sisters who go to Leicester Square every day to sell their wares: one sells flowers, another shoelaces, and the eldest to sell her body. Another song whose name now escapes narrates in an uncharacteristically joyful tone the slapstick attempts of a cash-strapped household trying to keep the landlord and the police from evicting them from their home—a sentiment shared by many of us today, and I smile smugly at my housemate as we belt out the verses.

But to return from those memories and reflections of my forefathers as I gaze into the Marakame’s firepit, I have to ask how any of those distant experiences relate to this man from rural Oaxaca, his enchanting song, and his early and so-undeserved death. It occurs to me that the open and honest pride he demonstrated in living his culture, his people, and his language in the face of five centuries of oppression and genocide has perhaps some parallel with that of my own forebears. Perhaps it is a shallow comparison, and perhaps indeed the story of Jewish nationalism should be a cautionary tale to any memory of this unique man.

Maestro Rosendo was the first person I have met who truly instilled in me an understanding of the true nature of humility. He offered a living example of it. His sense of peace, honesty, simplicity, wisdom, and connection to nature is something that will stay with me as a guiding light. And I think that it is perhaps not entirely self-serving to look to his shameless celebration of a culture on the verge of extinction as some form of example. As I begin to delve deeper into the theory of Linguistic Nationalism and reflect on how this theory may reflect on my own teaching practice and that of my colleagues—particularly in my former workplace in Southern Mexico. The ever-expanding use of English as a Lingua Franca in the academy proves an interesting counterpoint to the resilient indigenous knowledge, voices, and language embodied by this man: Murakame Uxatiki.