Lila Downs

Lila Downs is one of the most influential artists in Latin America. She has one of the world’s most singular voices, and is known for her charismatic performances. Her own compositions often combine genres and rhythms as diverse as Mexican rancheras and corridos, boleros, jazz standards, hip-hop, cumbia, and North American folk music. Her music often focuses on social justice, immigration, and women’s issues.

She grew up in both Minnesota and Oaxaca Mexico, her mother is from the Mixtec indigenous group, and her father was Scottish-American. Lila sings in Spanish, English, and varios Native American languages as Zapotec, Mixtec, Nahuatl, Maya, and Purepecha.

She has recorded duets with artists as diverse as Mercedes Sosa, Caetano Veloso, Juanes, Nora Jones, Juan Gabriel, Santana, The Chieftains, Diego La Cigala, Celso Piña and Toto La Momposina. Chavela Vargas “named” Lila her “sucessor”.

Lila has graced the stages of many of the world’s most prestigious festivals and venues including Jazz at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and the Hollywood Bowl. She was invited by Barack Obama to sing at the White House, and has performed at the Oscars for her participation in the film Frida.

Lila has recorded 14 studio albums and 2 lives. She has been nominated for nine Grammy Awards and has won six.

Lila Downs in numbers
Facebook: 1.500.000 fans
Spotify: 1.873.000 monthly listeners
Chaine Youtube: 281.716.983 views
Grammy Awards: 6 (9 nominations)

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The Mexican American singer has a stunning voice, a confident multicultural vision grounded in her Mixtec Indian roots. Los Angeles Times

Ms. Downs has multiple voices, from an airborne near-falsetto down to a forthright alto and a sultry, emotive contralto. New York Times

Few alternative artists have the dynamic power and range of this bilingual warrior-woman, who has recorded nine albums, earning a Grammy and four Latin Grammys along the way. NPR

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Sara Curruchich

There is no better way of introducing Sara Curruchich than to say that being a woman in Guatemala is an act of resistance, and being a Mayan Kaqchikel woman as well as an artist is not only a political statement, but an act of defiance.

Sara Curruchich was born in 1993 in San Juan Comalapa, Chimaltenango, in a Mayan Kaqchikel community, in the central highlands of Guatemala. Her people have a long tradition of art and knowledge, as well as a history of resistance and struggle. Her music is thus born from her people’s collective and individual feelings, history, memory, culture, languages and struggles, as well as her own, personal stance as an artist.

Sara Curruchich is the first indigenous Guatemalan singer and songwriter to sing in Kaqchikel (her mother tongue), as well as Spanish, for an international audience. Her voice and message of love, awareness, respect and defense of life in all its forms, have led many people to regard her as a beacon of light and hope.

Since she began her career, Sara Curruchich has taken her message to some of Guatemala’s remotest communities, performing in rural communities, as well as well-known theaters and venues. She is also a cultural manager and teaches music workshops in grassroots communities throughout Guatemala.

Her music blends various genres such as rock, folk and traditional Mayan Kaqchikel music. Sara’s strong commitment to historical memory has earned her recognition, not only in the world of art and music, but also in various arenas for debate at a community level. To this day, she has performed in major venues in South America, Central America, North America and Europe.

In March 2020, Sara Curruchich performed in Mexico City’s Zócalo, during the Tiempo de Mujeres Festival, held as part of International Women’s Day, alongside singer/songwriters Ana Tijoux and Mon Laferte.

Sara is preparing the release of her new album Mujer Indígena (Indigenous Woman), filled with sounds that introduce her audience to new cultural beats, songs bearing powerful messages that voice the dignified strength, existence and path of indigenous women around the world. This album features duets with Rosalina Tuyuc, Carmen Cúmez, Lila Downs, Muerdo, and Amparo Sánchez. To be released in the fall of 2021.

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Cuarteto Tafi

It was during a trip to Argentina, on the colorful and arid lands from the northwest of this country, that this Franco Argentinian quartet gathers for the first time. Perched on a mountain at 3000 meters, wandering the popular open stages, the musicians decide to call this musical and human encounter the Cuarteto Tafi.

Since its beginnings on the French scene, the group has brought its personal and original touch to world music, by mixing song in poetic and committed Spanish – sweet nostalgia for the Argentinian exile of the singer – to the sound of the eastern Mediterranean from the Greek bouzouki, to the softness and dexterity of the flamenco guitar, and the rhythms bewitching Afro Latin percussions.

Each with its own history and its metal influences, salsa, flamenco, rock. From these different personalities and musical stories, they have managed to create an entity, 4 albums and a notoriety noticed on the French scene.

Today their musical style is open, uninhibited, propels and frees itself: an original fusion between music with Latin American influences and arrangements with modern sounds.

Their music whispers and shouts to us about the world, with its bitterness and its flaws, its painful borders and its revolting injustices, but also with its beauties and its buds of hope, its loves and his fights.

Around Leonor Harispe, radiant singer with a remarkable scenic presence, Ludovic Deny (Bouzouki), Matthieu Guenez (Guitar and Oud) and Frédéric Theiler (Percussions) win with force on this irresistibly energetic and poetic 4 th album.

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“The Cuarteto Tafi brings to Argentine music a fresh breeze of creativity, quality and originality.” Eduardo Makaroff (Gotan Project)

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