Susana Baca Meets Berklee

Berklee College of Music's 2014-15 Signature Series continues with Susana Baca Meets Berklee. Baca, a Grammy- and Latin Grammy Award-winning Afro-Peruvian vocalist who is the former cultural minister of Peru as well as its first black cabinet member, joins a 30-piece band composed of Berklee students on November 13 at the Berklee Performance Center. The unique performance features students original arrangements of her music. The student band includes seven students hailing from Baca's native Peru.

Produced by Grammy Award-winning bassist Oscar Stagnaro and directed by Matthew Nicholl, chair of the Contemporary Writing and Production Department and executive director of the Mediterranean Music Institute, Baca will conduct a clinic with Berklee students earlier that day.

Susana Baca Meets Berklee takes place Thursday, November 13, 8:00 p.m. at the Berklee Performance Center (BPC), 136 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston. Available at Berklee.edu/bpc or the BPC box office, tickets are $18 and $8 in advance and $24 and $12 the day of the show. For more information, call 617 747-2261.

Hailed by the New York Times for her cool, distinct voice, Baca, born in the black coastal barrio of Chorrillos, where descendants of slaves have lived since the Spanish Empire, has long been a crucial force in raising awareness and appreciation of Afro-Peruvian music and culture, both within Peru and around the world. First gaining widespread attention in the United States in 1995, when her rendition of Maria Lando, a heartbreaking ballad of third-world worker oppression, was featured on David Byrne's compilation The Soul of Black Peru, Baca has remained an influential exponent of her home country's musical traditions, performing concerts around the world and releasing a series of acclaimed recordings. Baca is particularly interested in reinterpreting old Afro-Peruvian melodies. At her best, Baca conveys an unforgettable, haunting melancholy, the lament of a people separated from their homeland by a continent and an ocean. With her husband she founded the Instituto Negrocontinuo (Black Continuum) in Lima, which is dedicated to preserving Afro-Peruvian culture. She released a new EP, Seis Poemas, in 2009, following it with the full-length Afrodiaspora in 2011.

LINK:	http://www.berklee.edu/news/susana-baca-meets-berklee...
	See more stories from berklee

Most recent headlines