RhoDeo 1814 Roots

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Today's artist is a prominent Peruvian singer-songwriter, school teacher, folklorist, ethnomusicologist and two-times Latin Grammy Award winner. She has been a key figure in the revival of Afro-Peruvian music.... ......N'Joy

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Much of the original music has been lost, but in the 1950s a revival was staged by José Durand, a white Peruvian criollo who was a folklore professor, and Porfirio Vásquez. Durand founded the Pancho Fierro Dance Company. Drawing upon elderly members of the community for memories of musical traditions, Durand collaborated with Vásquez to revive various songs and dances to create the repertoire for the group. One of the best known is his revival of the carnival dance “El Son de los Diablos.” In colonial times, this dance was featured in parades with a fleet of austere, pure angels leading the way, followed by the mischievous devils. In the revival of the dance, the angels were eliminated, and the crowds were entertained by rambunctious devils and their leader “el diablo mayor.” The dance featured energetic zapateo tap-dancing. The group performed for about two years, including a concert for Peruvian composer Chabuca Granda and a tour through Chile.

Actually, poet Nicomendes Santa Cruz and Victoria Santa Cruz (siblings) both created Cumanana (1957) an Afroperuvian ensemble that highlighted the rich West and Central African call and response poetry, music / dance traditions that were a staple of Peruvian culture and are essentially valued to this day.

One long lasting Afro-Peruvian dance company was Perú Negro, which, incorporated more modern use of percussion combined with criollo music. Perú Negro is also known for their use of blackface, celebrating the mixture of African and Spanish heritage. Two of their best known pieces are “Dance of the Laundresses,” which depicts historical hard working yet beautiful black women in Peru, and the “Canto a Elegua,” which shows tribal religion before the Spanish influence.

Lima and Chincha are two areas where there are many performers of this music, which is played in night clubs, dinner dances and festivals. Notable artists and groups through the years have included Victoria and Nicomedes Santa Cruz, Lucila Campos, Pepe Vásquez, and Susana Baca. One of the best known songs in the genre is Peru's "Toro Mata".

Today, Afro-Peruvians (also known as Afrodescent Peruvians) reside mainly on the central and south coast, with the majority of the population in the provinces of Lima, Callao, Nazca, Chincha, Ica and Cañete. Many Afro-Peruvians live on the northern coast in Lambayeque and Piura. The greatest concentration of Afro-Peruvians and mestizos of Afrodescent is in the Callao, an area that has historically received many of the Afro-Peruvians from the north and southern coast.

On the southern coast of the Ica Region, there are many cotton fields and vineyards, and the area is commonly known for its black populations such as that in El Carmen of the populous Chincha Province. There are other such towns in the Nazca, Ica City and in the district of San Luis in the Cañete Province near Lima, and Nazca to the south of Lima. In Lima, the towns best known for having large concentrations of Afro-descended populations are Puente Piedra, Chorrillos, Rimac, and La Victoria. Afro-Peruvians also reside in the northern regions of Peru such as La Libertad and Ancash, but the larger populations are concentrated in the northern valley plantations of the regions of Piura and Lambayeque.

Most Afro-Peruvian communities live in rural farming areas where mango, rice, and sugarcane production is present. Contrary to the southern coast, these communities are mainly found away from the coastal shores and into the region of the yungas, where the plain meets the Andes. The greatest Afro-Peruvian populations of the north coast are found mainly in the outskirts of the Morropón Province and concentrate themselves in Piura and Tumbes. The central province of Morropón is well known for its black communities in cities such as Chulucanas, Yapatera, Chapica del Carmelo, La Matanza, Pabur (Hacienda Pabur), Morropón, Salitral, Buenos Aires, San Juan de Bigote and Canchaque, and to the north Tambogrande. All of these cities belong to the Piura Region, where there are large rice fields and mango plantations. South of the Lambayeque Region and north of La Libertad where sugarcane production was very productive in the past, there are several cities known for their black inhabitants. Examples are the colonial city of Saña in Lambayeque, famous for being the second most important Afro-Peruvian city of the Peruvian north. Tuman, Capote, Cayaltí, and Batán Grande within the region of Lambayeque also have large amounts of Afro-Peruvian populations in the sugarcane region.

In November 2009, the Peruvian government issued an official apology to Peru's Afro-Peruvian people for centuries of racial injustice; it was the first such apology ever made by the government.

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With a splendid voice and equally impressive interpretive gifts, Susana Baca is a primary exponent of the Afro-Peruvian musical tradition. Baca came to world attention in 1995, when her rendition of "Maria Lando," a heartbreaking ballad of Third World worker oppression, was included on David Byrne's The Soul of Black Peru compilation. Since the Byrne compilation, she has toured the United States several times and released several albums, including an eponymously titled solo album on Byrne's Luaka Bop label; a disc, Del Fuego y del Agua, for Tonga Productions; 2002's Espíritu Vivo, and 2006's Travesías. 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.

Baca was born in the black coastal barrio of Chorrillos, outside Lima, where descendants of slaves have lived since the days of the Spanish Empire. Her family was interested in music; her father played the guitar, while her mother was a dancer, and she grew up listening to Cuban musicians like Pérez Prado and Beny Moré. Baca's singing first came to public attention when she was a student. She formed an experimental group combining poetry and song, and started performing after receiving grants from Peru's Institute of Modern Art and the National Institute of Peruvian Culture. She attracted the attention of the composer and singer Chabuca Granda, who became her mentor. Granda encouraged Baca to record, but a 1983 record deal fell apart upon Granda's death. Baca then turned her attention to researching the Afro-Peruvian tradition. 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.

In July 2011 the newly elected President of Peru, Ollanta Humala, announced that Baca would become his Minister of Culture. On 28 July she was sworn in, becoming the second Afro-Peruvian cabinet minister in the history of independent Peru. She resigned due to a cabinet reshuffle on 11 December 2011. In November 2011 she was elected to the Organization of American States (OAS) as President of the Commission of Culture for the period 2011–13.

Baca founded the Instituto Negrocontinuo (Black Continuum Institute) in her seafront home in Chorrillos, to foster the collection, preservation and creation of Afro-Peruvian culture, music and dance.


Susana Baca in her own words
I was born in Lima and grew up in a small town in Peru called Chorrillos. My father was a chauffeur for a wealthy family and my mother worked as a cook and sometimes washed clothes. In Lima we lived in an alleyway, the kind where the servants lived, off the main streets past the fancy neighborhoods. My father played the guitar. He was the official musician of the alley. Whenever there was a party they called him. He played serranitas which are tales of the Golondrinos, people who came from Los Andes near the coast in the time of cotton-picking. My father learned the serranitas from them in his childhood. They are sung at Christmas: (singing) Ay, my dove is flying away, she’s gone. Let her go, she’ll soon return. “I have an older sister and brother, and the three of us would sing together. My mother taught us how to dance. She’d say, “How can my children not know how to dance?” And so we sang and danced every afternoon. Later, my mother bought a record player, which was a big event. I imitated everything. My sister enrolled in a singing contest on the radio, and we went to watch the broadcast. It left a very strong mark on me. I saw her there and felt as though that was where I wanted to be. My brother made me a stick with a can on the end, which was the microphone. People came and we put on a show. I would drop anything for music. “I tried not to become a professional singer, mainly for my mother’s sake. She thought I wouldn’t be able to earn a living. That’s my mother’s image of musicians. My mother told me many stories about musicians who were not famous like Felipe Pingo, a renowned musician and composer who died of tuberculosis. She said, “This is the destiny of my daughter,” and she pushed me to become a teacher. I liked studying to be a teacher; I dedicated myself to being a singer later. When I first met my husband, Ricardo, I was active as a musician, but everything moved so slowly. I dedicated myself to music, and couldn’t devote myself to looking for work or figuring out how to record an album. I thought that if I worked hard enough, I’d find someone who was interested in working with me. I realized, after many years, that no one was interested in what I was singing, which was poetry. I was black, singing black music. It was a big problem. In Peru the black population is very small—you find mixed people, like me, or even lighter. But as a culture it is present everywhere. And another thing: blacks also segregate themselves. By class or by skin tone. I’ve heard my aunts say, “Marry someone lighter, even an Indian, so that your children will have hair they can comb.” “I would like to be remembered for my voice, of course. But also for helping to spread the music of my ancestors—all those people who were never recognized for their work or for their beautiful culture.


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Susana Baca’s singing – sometimes plaintive, sometimes a purr, always evocative – hangs gracefully over sophisticated songs, equal parts rhythm and emotion. “Ms. Baca, with her cool, distinct voice, as beautiful as any working in pop, has the strength to create her own tradition.” The New York Times

Is it rhythm, merely rhythm, that moves my heart? Is it merely the rhythm of the words, the cadence of falling notes that floods me with longing, calling to me? Does rhythm have memory, can it travel through time and make the old forever new? Can it tell us of other nights, caress us? Does it have a feeling, to make us dance alive in our skin?

All the songs that make up this record carry a life force flowing from the different rhythms comprising the rich and varied world of Peruvian culture. They are the ancestral rhythms of the grandparents who told us their stories, the mestizo rhythms of religious processions, the rhythms of cadence searching for words in poetry, and the eternal rhythm of the heart and celebration.

Our greatest challenge is to find the one true rhythm of freedom—something like the wind that allows a bird to fly, or a new language more powerful than speech, that holds you. -Susana Baca

 Susana Baca - Susana Baca   (flac  231mb)

01 Negra Presentuosa 4:15
02 Molino Molero 2:55
03 Heces 2:48
04 Tu Mirada Y Mi Voz 3:49
05 Zamba Malató 4:25
06 Luna Llena 3:35
07 Caras Linda 4:58
08 Se Me Van Los Pies 5:02
09 Enciéndete Candela 4:32
10 Señor De Los Milagros 4:41

Susana Baca - Susana Baca (ogg   98mb )


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On this record Susana Baca delivers yet another solid example of why she is the queen of Afro-Peruvian music. These songs drift by like time in a crowded dirt-floor bar, like the hard sweet-sour of well-made cuba libre. A band composed mostly of well-schooled New York session players provides competent backing. Baca's voice is smooth, her songs and world darkly sinister. Anyone into the sounds of her neck of the woods or serious female singers with a unique voice like Cesaria Evoria will certainly enjoy this. Yet another worthy effort from a woman who refuses to pander to the nouveau hippie crowd.

Susana Baca - Eco De Sombras   (flac  248mb)

01 De Los Amores 5:14
02 Valentín 5:20
03 Poema 3:13
04 Los Amantes 5:34
05 El Mayoral 4:07
06 La Macorina 3:57
07 Golpe E' Tierra 5:22
08 Panalivio/Zancudito 4:47
09 Reina Mortal 3:22
10 Xanaharí 4:41
11 Untitled 2:55

Susana Baca - Eco De Sombras (ogg 108mb)

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Recorded in New York just after the trauma of 9/11, Espíritu Vivo marries Susana Baca's wonderfully airy vocals and her usual Peruvian backing band with the downtown N.Y.C. sounds of John Medeski and guitarist Marc Ribot -- and it proves to be a wonderful union indeed. Recorded before a small invited audience, this has the immediacy of a live album, with the benefits of the studio, a superb balance of instruments. As usual, most of the material comes from the Afro-Peruvian canon that's Baca's hallmark, but she does draw upon outsiders for three interesting covers: Mongo Santamaria's "Afro Blue," Caetano Veloso's "13 de Mayo," and most surprisingly of all, "Anchor Song" from Björk. But she integrates them perfectly into her style, taking them all to a place they'd never imagined, where her voice can be dreamlike over a simple backing, as on the gorgeous "Si Me Quitaran Totalamente Todo" and "Les Feuilles Mortes," or more rhythmically lively, which she finds on "Caracunde" and "Se Me Van los Pies." Medeski and Ribot work well with the combo, Ribot especially, offering unusual atmospheric licks throughout, while Medeski's Hammond organ offers a warm bed a sound for Baca's voice. Given the time and place of recording, there's an astonishingly transcendental quality to the record, as if Baca is giving every iota of herself to the music, and the players are following her lead. Her best album to date, which is quite a claim.

Susana Baca - Espiritu Vivo   (flac  304mb)

01 La Noche Y El Día 4:41
02 Se Me Quitaran Totalmente Todo 3:31
03 Caracunde 4:09
04 El Fusil 5:32
05 Se Me Van Los Pies 5:34
06 13 De Mayo 4:19
07 Toro Mata 6:40
08 Aparición 5:05
09 Afro-Blue/Zum Zum 5:19
10 Les Feuilles Mortes 5:52
11 Anchor Song 5:48

Susana Baca - Espiritu Vivo (ogg  125mb)

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This album was released by Empresa Editora El Comercio a powerful newspapergroup from Peru, i assume this came with a special newspaper. Anyway it comes with a 15 page booklet on Susana, obviously in Spanish (alas). It's a mix of older and later Luaka Bop times (96).

 Susana Baca - A Viva Voz Vol 1 ( flac  285mb)

01 Aparición 5:02
02 Valentín 5:17
03 Bartola 3:39
04 Los Gallinazos 3:19
05 Panalivio , Zancudito 4:47
06 Poema 3:14
07 Te Quiero 4:51
08 Summertime 4:54
09 Caras Lindas 5:01
10 Se me van los pies 5:35
11 Copla de la O 0:54
12 El Mayoral 4:08

 Susana Baca - A Viva Voz Vol 1 (ogg  119mb)

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