Memorial BRS Builds Community in School, on Stage through Latin Music

Richard Hildner was about nine years old when he watched his grandfather's fingers dance across the guitar, filling the air with bright, quick fingerpicked rhythms of traditional Peruvian music. Around him, relatives spoke in Quechua, an indigenous language from the Inca Empire. The Andes mountains region his mother’s family had called home was 4,000 miles away, but in that Madison, Wis., living room, the culture of Peru was as present as ever.

“Most of that music that's in Quechua is the genre called huayno, especially in the region where my family is from,” Hildner, a Spanish bilingual resource specialist at Vel Phillips Memorial High School, explained. “Right away, I wanted to learn to play guitar.”

In addition to huayno, his uncle Numa Armacanqui, a former longtime BRS at West High School, introduced Afro-Peruvian music to Hildner, who “loved it from the very beginning.” The genre is a mix of West African and Spanish music that centers around guitar and a wooden-boxed percussion instrument called the cajón.

After graduating from West High and while attending Duke University, Hildner fell in love with another genre: jazz. While he was studying math and physics, the music rooms soon became his favorite spots on campus, where he learned from famed jazz saxophonist Paul Jeffrey.

“There were hardly any Latinos at the college, but hanging with other musicians became a refuge,” Hildner said. “It was more than just the music, it was a learning of the culture. Not through research, but through people. I think that's the template to learn anything — meet and interact with people.”

Hildner followed that belief around the world: to Italy, where he gigged for the first time with Jeffrey, back to Madison playing with the Black Music Ensemble, and to Peru, studying Afro-Peruvian music with the legendary ambassador of the Peruvian cajón, Juan Medrano Cotito. With ensembles, he has played festivals in Cuba and toured India as a musical ambassador with the U.S. State Department.

In Madison, Hildner is part of countless ensembles, playing live music from all across Latin America. His biggest group, La Combi, plays Thursday nights at the Cardinal on East Wilson Street.

“For the size of Madison, it's pretty crazy how much Latin music we have here,” Hildner said. “I’m so fortunate to have really amazing musicians to play with.”

While Hildner has spent decades studying music across genres and around the world with some of the most experienced, talented musicians, when the morning school bell rings, it’s his turn to teach.

Now in his 13th year as a BRS at Memorial, Hildner brings the same energy and love for culture into the classroom that he does on stage. Whether he’s supporting Spanish-speaking students or connecting with families, he sees his role as another way to build community — just like music.

Every Wednesday during lunch, Hildner gets to bring out his guitar for Latin Music Club, where he leads a group of students in playing a variety of Latin music. The genres flow every few years based on students’ cultural backgrounds and preferences, bringing a diverse range of Venezuelan, Mexican and Dominican music to the stage. 

“They teach me these newer genres and I’ll try my hand at them. But it’s funny when they say ‘man, it sounds kind of old fashioned when you do that,’” Hildner said, laughing.

He’s seen the community the group has built over the years, recalling how, for a couple of years, club members would walk to class with their guitars slung across their backs and serenade students with choir members for “Singing Valentines.”

“Watching that beautiful dynamic, of making music together and sharing it, that’s how music is supposed to work,” Hildner said. “It's not supposed to be sitting with some headphones on as an isolated event.”

These are the same lessons Hildner has been gathering for decades: from early guitar lessons with his grandfather and uncles, jazz rehearsal halls and stages around the world, they all come back to the same idea: music is about people. About culture. About connection.

“When I hear that huayno music today, I’m back in the living room with my grandma and my aunts and my uncles and parents and whole family,” Hildner said. “That’s the reason I love it — because the guitar is something that brings people together.”