We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Diego Hinojosa Farrera a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Diego, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
One of the biggest risks I’ve taken was when I moved from Toronto to Mexico City. Apart from the huge life changing decision that is moving back home after living 7 years abroad, the decision implied the closing of many important personal and career-related cycles.
After studying a music career for 4 years in Toronto, the Canadian government facilitated a work permit for 3 years, so I decided to take advantage of that and started my professional musician life abroad. It was all very exciting, but the way the immigration laws worked in Canada, I was somewhat restricted as to which jobs I could do in order to apply to a permanent residency once my work permit expired. I basically had to have a job in which I had a formal contract and I was in a payroll etc. Being a jazz musician, there are not many “formal” jobs like that, but I was able to find a teaching job and made a decent living, even in an expensive city like Toronto. I was very happy and grateful to be financially stable in an exciting metropolis after a couple of years being out of college, but as time passed by, I was teaching more, and playing music a lot less. My dream until this point in my life was to be a jazz guitarist and composer, that is why I had chosen to study in Toronto, because it had a vibrant jazz scene, and was fairly close to New York, the jazz capital of the world. But I was not being able to do that, and I was worried that if I stayed longer in Toronto, I would feel more and more rooted to the life I was building there, and I would be more afraid of taking the risk of pursuing my dream.
Another factor that contributed heavily to my decision was that I was starting to write music in Spanish with my brother for our project “Por Lo Menos Dos”. I was enjoying writing more pop-oriented music very much, and I was eager to explore this new interest.
So in this sense, moving to Mexico City represented the chance of exploring a new path and pursuing my life-long dream of making and playing music, but at the same time, I felt it represented putting a somewhat-permanent stop to my dream of being a jazz guitarist, and it certainly represented giving up the financial stability I had achieved and starting over from the ground up in a new city.
In the end, I am honestly so happy that I took that risk. I moved to Mexico City in 2020, so I had the huge luck of going through the pandemic with my parents, and now I am a lot closer to my loved ones. But apart from this, I am building the life I have always wanted. Starting from scratch has been very difficult, don’t get me wrong, especially after the pandemic and how everything has changed in the music industry, but I am a lot happier because I am doing what I love to do and I am building a life full of connections that I care about deeply.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
After 15 years of being a musician and all that music means to me now, it is kind of funny how I stumbled into music almost by accident. My journey began when, after moving to a different city in middle school, eager to make friends, I volunteered to play bass for a rock band despite having absolutely no idea how to play. That simple choice transformed my life in a profound way. Music became my way of building connections. So much so that my main original music project “Por Lo Menos Dos” is the result of the special bond I have with my brother Juan Pablo. Growing up, we didn’t get along, but once we both discovered our fascination with music, we found common ground through it, and we’ve been creating together ever since.
This is why I am so fond and proud of Por Lo Menos Dos. Despite living in different continents—he’s been in London for 12 years now and I lived in Toronto for 7 years, but I’m currently in Mexico City—we’ve found ways to work together, blending our diverse musical influences and experiences living abroad into something uniquely ours. It’s been a beautiful way to explore our creativity and deepen our relationship.
Apart from Por Lo Menos Dos, I compose, produce, arrange, teach and play as a session musician. I am mainly active in the vibrant Independent Music Scene in Mexico city, but I work with people form Canada, London, the USA, amongst other countries, and the main focus is always the same. It is simply to collaborate with poeple who value authenticity; whether I’m arranging a track, performing live, or teaching, I aim to create genuine musical moments that resonate with people and bring them closer together by sharing who we all truly are.
Sorry if I sound repetitive, but ultimately, for me, music is about connection. I have experienced how music has linked me with people in profound ways, and I want to keep sharing that experience. Whether through writing songs, performing, or teaching, my goal is to propagate meaningful connections and bring people closer together.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
I think it is hard for some people to understand how deeply we care about our craft. Throughout my life I have stumbled upon people not really getting some of the decisions I’ve made putting music as a priority. And I can’t really blame them, I mean, moving to a different city, or ending a romantic relationship because of music are pretty big decisions, and I understand how it might be hard to get how music can have such an impact in my life.
To try to explain it, I have a good analogy.
We can think about music as a relationship I have built and cared for for my entire life. When something special happens to me, I write music about it, when I’m in love, I go to music, when I’m heartbroken, I go to music, I get annoyed with it when I spend too much time struggling to write or play new music, etc. It really is a relationship that has grown together with me since childhood, and I think it is much easier to understand just how important it is for me if we think of music in those terms. Who wouldn’t consider taking big risks for a loved one? I think we all have at some point, and music for me is no different than that.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
I think the best we can do right now is to remind ourselves just how important manual labor is, and reward it accordingly. For the longest time society has been obsessed with productivity and efficiency, and this has resulted in the way we compensate labor. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think making processes more efficient and automatic is a bad thing in and of itself. Both things can co-exist, let’s use technology to make sure we all meet our basic needs with the less amount of effort, let’s even use technology to generate ideas that otherwise we wouldn’t be able to generate, let’s use technology, by all means. But let’s re-orient the way we reward labor, let’s bring back the humanity to it.
A very clear example that I can speak from my personal experience involved in the music industry is the use of AI. I think AI is a very powerful tool that can help out almost everyone to solve everyday and not-so-everyday problems very efficiently. And not only that, but generative AI can create melodies and chord progressions, or unexpected soundscapes and interesting timbres, so by all means, play around with it and create a cool song with Elvis and Kurt Cobain singing as a duet. But let’s not only, or even mainly, reward labor done in this way, let’s start consuming more local music. Go to local live shows, buy local music project’s merch, pay for downloading their songs on Bandcamp. Make it a priority to support the local music scene, because those are the people that actually depend almost exclusively in the local economy to earn their livelihood.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/porlomenosdos/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/porlomenosdos
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@porlomenosdos
Image Credits
Camila Vazquez Mellado, Feli Gutierrez, Fernanda Rivadeneyra