Rodolfo Santiago “Rudy” Lopez only took up learning to play an instrument at age 50, after retiring from a career in the U.S. Air Force and civil service. But as co-founder of Conjunto Heritage Taller, the musical maestro helped transform the culture of San Antonio.
Lopez died Sept. 23 at age 83 from complications of mesothelioma, a type of cancer.
Lopez and Carol Rodriguez co-founded the Conjunto Heritage Taller in 2002 with a vision to carry on the tradition of teaching conjunto music to students of all ages. As the tagline for the Taller — “Música tradicional for youths of all ages” — suggests, Lopez believed music made people young no matter their numerical age.
“The real beauty of what he was able to do is that relationship that he nurtured with the youth,” said Nicolás Valdez, a performer and musician who began playing alongside Lopez as a teenager. “That was really the success of that program and led to a whole generation of young conjunto musicians.”
Keli Rosa Cabunoc Romero, who took over as Conjunto Heritage Taller director in March, estimated that thousands of students have been through the program over its two decades. Currently, 100 students of all ages are enrolled in the program and several performed recently for Oktobin Fest at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts.
Bridging generations
Rodriguez emphasized that the intergenerational commitment of the Taller to nurture and expand the audience for traditional Mexican American music was present at the very beginning.
“We wanted the youth to continue this traditional music going forward, but we knew that the elders were the ones that held the knowledge of how to play the music,” she said.
Rodriguez said students of the program have gone on to form their own bands and several have become music instructors in other programs. “They’re out playing in the community, and that’s certainly something we’ve been very proud to see.”
In 1995, at age 14, Valdez met Lopez when both were participants in the Texas Folklife Resources Apprenticeship program. Soon after, Lopez taught conjunto music at the Teatro De Artes De Juan Seguin in Seguin and invited Valdez along to accompany as an accordionist.
The teenager and 50-something bajo sexto player formed a bond during the 40-minute drives and “built a bridge between generations,” Valdez said.
Robert Casillas was 8 years old when he met Lopez while both were taking music classes in the late 1990s at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. When it came time for a student presentation, Casillas’ teacher Valerio Longoria deemed the youngster ready to perform and paired him with Lopez.
They found themselves in demand and formed the duo Dos Generaciones, releasing an album and performing in San Antonio, Austin, Houston, the Rio Grande Valley and throughout Texas, spreading the intergenerational conjunto gospel.
Easter Bash
But music was also about family for Lopez. Both Valdez and Casillas said their fondest memories are of Lopez’s annual Easter Bash, a rollicking music and dance party held at the family ranch near Braunig Lake.
“All the old conjunto heads” would be there, Valdez said, from Salvador García of Los Pavos Reales to Longoria, who once taught for the Taller. They would jam into the night, long after the families had packed up and left.
“When they started blasting out songs, you could just tell they were pulling them from the depths of their memory. It was the most magical thing ever,” Valdez said.
Lopez’s daughter Leticia Spicer said not only did her father believe music bridged generations, but also crossed borders, real and perceived.
“He would take his bajo all over the world, he traveled everywhere. He would say that music has no ethnicity,” she said. “You combine these two instruments,” Spicer said of the traditional conjunto instrumentation accordion and bajo sexto, “and you can touch a lot of different cultures.”
And Lopez was a natural educator, she said. “Dad had a special quality. … He wasn’t a self-promoter but would promote and encourage everybody. When he found this talent of teaching and of music, by promoting others it lifted them up, and it lifted him up.”
Spicer said her father joined the Air Force before graduating from Central Catholic High School and served in East Asia during the occupation of Korea after the Korean War. He reenlisted and saw action in the Vietnam War, then returned to study at Our Lady of the Lake University, afterward earning a law degree from the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University in Houston.
Lopez worked as a civil servant at Kelly Air Force Base until his retirement, first teaching in General Education Diploma and English as a Second Language programs before discovering the passion that would become his second career and lasting legacy.
Spicer said Lopez always told her “life is for living. And oh, my God, he lived.”
Lopez is survived by his wife of 59 years Elvira Saldaña, daughters Monica (George) Krist, Leticia (John) Spicer, sister Olga Favela and numerous grandchildren, nephews and nieces.
Services will be held with a rosary Monday evening at 7 p.m. at Porter Loring Mortuary, followed by a mass at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church.
Cabunoc Romero said the Conjunto Heritage Taller will hold a celebration of life with an open community altar for Lopez at Lerma’s on Nov. 5 from 2-7 p.m., with all donations going to the Taller’s scholarship program.
