One contribution emerging from my research concerns how musical learning unfolds across integrated formal and informal environments in Cuba, a process I name calledemia. 

Linguistically, calledemia is a portmanteau that merges the Spanish terms calle (street) and académico. In the expression en la calle, calle does not refer only to a spatial domain, but functions as a metaphor for learning outside institutional contexts – that is, learning embedded in lived, everyday environments. Similarly, académico does not refer solely to institutional locations, but to formally codified knowledge and practices, as in lo académico. 

Descriptively and analytically, calledemia (and its adjectival form ‘calledemic’) refers to a recurring praxis observed among many Cuban musicians, who combine community-based learning and formal training in order to develop versatile and multi-faceted professional identities. Cuban musicians have long been acclaimed for their strong command of both Cuban music genres and Western art music, as well as for their adaptation to other musical traditions, such as jazz. Calledemia highlights that Cuban musicians’ generative skills stem from weaving together multi-ecological learning trajectories. 

Whereas terms such as hybridity tend to imply a fusion of musical genres, calledemia refers to practices that emerge from a century-long socio-cultural history in which African- and European-derived musical traditions were long maintained in parallel, under conditions of hierarchy and separation before converging within shared learning ecologies. 

Grounded in the Cuban context, calledemia is not ethnographically universal, but it is analytically transferable, inviting reflection on how musicians elsewhere construct knowledge across genre and learning boundaries elsewhere. In this sense, by naming the dynamics to which it refers, calledemia renders them more visible, sensitising us to how experiential and socially grounded learning intersects with pre-planned and analytical forms of instruction.