Caña Dulce Caña Brava: Celebrating the 12th Annual NY Son Jarocho Festival
Company:
Flushing Town Hall
The Annual NY Son Jarocho Festival concludes a week-long celebration of son jarocho, the music, dance, and culture of Veracruz, Mexico. A full day of performances, the 12th Annual NY Son Jarocho Festival will feature East Coast Son Jarocho groups and will be headlined by Mexico-based ensemble Caña Dulce Caña Brava. The Festival is a co-presentation by Flushing Town Hall and the Son Jarocho NY Collective.
Caña Dulce Caña Brava highlights feminine poetry and voices, taking the spectator on a voyage through multiple rhythms, accompanied by traditional string instruments such as the harp and the jarana, the zapateado (the percussive dance done on a wooden platform that accompanies the music and is considered the "heartbeat" of Son Jarocho), and poetic improvisation in rhyme. Offering an assortment of colors, textures and images to diverse and multi-generational audiences, the ensemble is defined by an original aesthetic that unites the traditional with the vanguard in a contemporary stage proposal. Since its formation in 2007, the group has carried the seal of feminine strength and beauty within the traditionally masculine world of Mexican Son.
Son Jarocho is the traditional music and dance from Veracruz, Mexico, and is a genre that lends itself to community building and audience participation through the Fandango, a celebration where people gather to play, sing, and dance. This style's main roots are located in the Spanish migration to Mexico during the colonial period, which brought with it sounds, rhythms, and instrumentation from the African Diaspora, Roma communities, and Arab populations from the Iberian Peninsula. This mix of cultures, combined with Mexican indigenous musical traditions, gave birth to Son Jarocho in the early 17th century. These days, Son Jarocho is performed throughout Mexico, US, Canada, South America, Western Europe, Scandinavia, and Japan. On the US East Coast, Son Jarocho has grown in the past 15 years thanks to community organizers and Son Jarocho practitioners can be found in New York, Boston, Charlottesville, Miami, Nashville, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. The Annual Son Jarocho Festival features a week of workshops, panel discussions, and special events, closing with a series of performances on the stage of Flushing Town Hall by local East Coast artists and guest performers from Mexico.
This partnership event is sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
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