An Evening of Cuban Music & Culture

The Roman Díaz Afro-Cuban Group from New York City will be coming to CU for a three-day residency April 22–24. The showcase performance takes place on April 22, titled An Evening of Cuban Music and Culture. The concert will also feature guest artist local group Ewe Odara.

The Roman Díaz Afro Cuban Group, led by Díaz (bio below), features three percussionists and singer/pianist Melvis Santa. This activity is sponsored by a Cultural Events Board grant that was awarded to Zane Cupec through the Graduate Musicology Society (GMS).

GMS was founded in fall 2017 with the mission to enrich the lives of students and community by promoting creative activities, performance, research and scholarship in music. This performance by Díaz forms part of a project dedicated to celebrating African influences in Western cultures, focusing on Cuban diasporic traditions in the U.S. The first project was funded last fall and featured another celebrated Cuban artist that resides in Los Angeles.

About Roman Díaz

The master percussionist, scholar and composer is regarded as a “living repository” of Afro Cuban music. He has performed and recorded with the likes of Paquito D’Rivera, Giovanni Hidalgo, Chucho Valdés and Wynton Marsalis. As a member of the seminal rumba ensemble Yoruba Andabo and mentored by the great Pancho Quinto (founder), he aided in the creation of the sound that has defined rumba since the 1980s in Cuba and all around the world.

His mastery of the sacred Cuban Batá drums along with his rock solid groove on congas is present on countless recordings worldwide. He has traveled extensively teaching master classes on Afro Cuban percussion at NYU, Yale and Harvard University, among others. Díaz is regarded as a unique musical visionary capable of steering the evolution of this art form far into the future because of his deep understanding of the culture and the sensibility with which he tells a story.

Díaz's Afro Cuban ensemble performs a selection of the diverse folkloric traditions inherited in Cuba from West Africa and The Caribbean, highlighting the Bantú (Congo), Carabalí (Abakuá) and Cuban-Haitian lineages, as well as Rumba.

About the Roman Díaz Afro Cuban Group

Roman Díaz: Artistic director, folkloric poet, percussion
Rafael Monteagudo: Percussion, vocals
Anier Alonso: Percussion, dance, vocals
Melvis Santa: Vocals, piano, dance

Ewe Odara is a Yoruba-Lucumi phrase loosely translated as “good health,” a reference to herbal medicinal practices within the Santería religion.

]The ensemble consists of Denver- and Boulder-area community members who share a passion for learning and sharing Afro-Cuban cultural traditions. Through the performance of Afro-Cuban batá drumming and Lucumi songs, they aim to increase an awareness of diversity in the Front Range community. In addition to their presence in Colorado, members frequently travel to Havana and Matanzas, Cuba, as well as Afro-Cuban communities in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York in order to both enrich their own cultural knowledge and maintain a connection to those they have learned from.

Sunday, April 22, 2018 at 6:45pm to 10:00pm

Old Main, Old Main Chapel
1600 Pleasant Street, Boulder, CO 80309

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