Las Cantoras Album Release Party • VIRTUAL
Las Cantoras Album Release Party • VIRTUAL
This event is virtual only and will not have an in-person component. Please do not travel to The Clarice to attend.
Event Attributes
Presented By
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Between 1960 and 1980, Venezuelan architect and folklorist Oswaldo Lares recorded more than 1,000 tracks of rural songs throughout his native Venezuela. In them, he captured little known genres and singers that would later become emblems of Venezuelan folklore. In the forthcoming album Las Cantoras, Venezuelan Afro-soul artist Betsayda Machado collaborates with Lares to curate a compilation of these archival recordings featuring female singers. Through this unique collaboration, the two will release a rarely seen side of Venezuela. This virtual album release party includes dynamic conversation and album teasers of Las Cantoras.
The album is produced in collaboration with Guillermo Lares, Odelia Artists founder Juan Souki and The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi. As part of this album release party, Machado will conduct a virtual residency with The Clarice live from Venezuela and visit with ethnomusicology and Spanish literature students at the University of Maryland.
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PROGRAM MENU: ABOUT THE ARTISTS • MULTIMEDIA
About the Artists
THE ARTISTS ON CAMPUS AND IN THE COMMUNITY
The Clarice is committed to creating extensive opportunities for our campus and community to engage with Visiting Artists throughout the season. During their time at UMD, Betsayda Machado will have engaged in:
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A class visit with UMD School of Music’s Music as Global Culture class
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A Spanish class in the School of Language, Literature and Culture
BETSAYDA MACHADO
Described by Jon Pareles in The New York Times as “Vital, accomplished, local, unplugged, deeply rooted,” Betsayda Machado is the voice of Venezuela. In 2016 after turning 40, her music came to attention in the USA, bringing new interest to multiple Afrovenezuelan dance and music genres like parranda, fulía, culo e’ puya and quitiplás. In 2017, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation nominated her tour as an outstanding Latin American live music project resulting in multiple concerts, festivals and community encounters across nearly fifty cities in the USA and Canada. Her live presentations combine Betsayda’s clarion lead vocals, harmony singing and deep, imminently danceable polyrhythms. She has been featured on NPR’s Tiny Desk, CNN’s Great Big Story, NBC news, Songlines magazine, The New York Times and many others.
OSWALDO LARES
Oswaldo Lares is a graduate of Cornell University with a major in Architecture born in 1932, in Maracaibo, Venezuela. He was committed to build a musical identity for Venezuela and set upon himself to track down the most autochthonous traditional manifestations once he returned to his homeland. During three decades, beginning in the 1960s, he travelled across the country side, visiting territories that have been often undervalued, and recorded sounds, dances and chants from the voices of the most knowledgeable performers; which with the passing of time became an astonishing collection of popular culture. He also produced around 450 thirty-minute radio shows titled La Revuelta, Musica de Venezuela y el Continente for the National Radio. In 1974, he founded a group called Convenezuela, Music and Dance Across Venezuela, with which he participated as a musician and presenter in about 400 concerts, including 14 international tours. Among other offerings, his most important is perhaps the donation of all the original audio recordings done between 1969 and 1977, including all of his radio programs, to The National Library in Caracas. In 2002, he started a foundation called Fundalares to begin the activity of digitizing this material. In 2020, he was awarded with the Premio Nacional de la Cultura award in Venezuela for his lifetime contribution spanning over 50 years of activity.
FELIX CONTRERAS
Felix Contreras is co-creator and host of Alt.Latino, NPR's pioneering radio show and podcast celebrating Latin music and culture since 2010. In addition to his post behind the mic, Contreras programs music from the Latin diaspora for the acclaimed Tiny Desk concerts and hosts a weekly Instagram Live interview with a wide-ranging roster of guests. A knowledgeable international ambassador for Latino heritage and arts, “Tio Felix” travels extensively in search of new talent and new music and captures important legacy performers in jazz and Latin genres. Various national and international publications have quoted his expertise on the contemporary influences of Latin culture, music and media. He is a recovering TV journalist whose first post at NPR in 2001 was as a Producer/Reporter for the NPR News Arts Desk. He is also NPR’s resident Deadhead and performs around the DC area with his Latin music Beatles cover band, Los Day Trippers.
FROM THE CURATOR
"I saw Betsayda Machado’s U.S. debut in January 2017 at GlobalFEST. I had inadvertently placed myself at the exact corner of the room where she made her entrance—and she was stunning, with such a powerful voice and presence. Erica Bondarev Rapach, our acting executive director and another member of our programming team, had arranged for Betsayda to perform at The Clarice in March 2021, but we had to cancel that performance due to COVID-19. So when Juan Souki (Betsayda’s agent) shared the Las Cantoras album project with us, we jumped at the opportunity to support Betsayda and this effort to preserve these important archival recordings. It’s been exciting to follow the album creation process—from hearing about historical research to hearing excerpts of the tracks and seeing previews of the beautiful album cover art—and I can’t wait for everyone to experience the magic of Las Cantoras."
Associate Director of Programming
Multimedia
ARTIST PHOTOS
