In July, I attended a community meeting at the Broadway Armory in Edgewater about the city’s plan to turn the Park District facility into a temporary shelter for asylum seekers. A group of protesters, angry that much of the armory’s programming would be relocated or otherwise disrupted, carried bright yellow signs reading “Don’t Displace Us.” […]
Author Archives: Catalina Maria Johnson
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Sara Curruchich sings Mayan anthems for times of resistance and struggle
When Sara Curruchich makes her Chicago debut at the sixth edition of Chicago’s LatiNxt festival, the melodic syllables of the Kaqchikel Mayan language will ring out across Navy Pier for what might be the very first time. Curruchich is part a Kaqchikel Mayan community in Guatemala’s highlands, and she’s one of the first artists to […]
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Tropa Magica embrace “chunti” culture on their third album
Tropa Magica’s psychedelic cumbia contains some of the happiest, most upbeat grooves I’ve heard in years. The four-piece emerged from East Los Angeles’s magical musical cauldron in 2017, evolving out of a band called Thee Commons, who combined cumbia with elements of metal and surf rock. The brothers behind Tropa Magica, guitarist and vocalist David […]
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Omar Sosa, Seckou Keita, and Gustavo Ovalles reveal the essence of Africa in the Americas with their musical conversation as Suba Trio
Cuban pianist and composer Omar Sosa has spent nearly 30 years exploring different facets of African music. He’s recorded more than two dozen albums, and each one is a journey of discovery and wonder. Among the most sublime are his collaborations with virtuosos from Africa and the African diaspora, including his two most recent, 2017’s […]
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Son Rompe Pera polish up the punk in their cumbia and infuse it with pan-Latinx vibes
The marimba-forward folkloric cumbia of Son Rompe Pera’s 2020 debut album, Batuco, didn’t entirely prepare me for the Mexican quintet’s visceral, madcap live shows. The style of cumbia in which they specialize more typically soundtracks intergenerational family celebrations than crowd surfing and mosh pits. But the group’s new second album, Chimborazo, sheds light on how […]
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Juan de Marcos & the Afro-Cuban All Stars celebrate the effervescence of Cuban music
There are unlimited reasons to love Cuban music, but what draws me the most is the relentless, resilient joy at its heart. The island’s grooves have a century-long history of sparking international music crazes, and it’s hard to imagine the panorama of contemporary music without the influences of artists such as Pérez Prado or the […]
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The Reader’s guide to World Music Festival Chicago 2022
The term “world music” has never been adequate to the task we’ve set it—even in its most benign reading, it implies a division between the listener and the rest of the world. And if that listener is in the United States, our country’s global hegemony in popular music colors the term’s meaning too. Americans don’t […]
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Sidi Wacho sing of a revolution that will be danced
Fronted by French-Algerian rapper Saidou and Chilean rapper Juanito Ayala, Sidi Wacho unite rebelliousness on both sides of the Atlantic (specifically, Northern Africa and the global south) through activist rap in French and Spanish. Accordionist Jeoffrey Arnone, trumpet player Manel Girard, and drummer Christophe Demazeux accompany the group’s heartfelt, powerful lyrics with dance rhythms from […]
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The LatiNxt festival serves up cutting-edge grooves with a generous side of roots
LatiNxt is the kind of festival I enjoy the most. This free, two-day fest on Navy Pier is geared toward the pulse of the current scene and allows concertgoers to make new musical discoveries. For its fifth year, LatiNxt features 17 performances on two stages per day, curated by local Latinx collective Future Rootz. They’ve […]
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Pascuala Ilabaca weaves the perfect party soundtrack for citizens of the world
Chilean singer-songwriter, accordionist, and pianist Pascuala Ilabaca offers endlessly unpredictable sonic pleasures. On six albums and one EP, she builds upon a foundation of Andean folkloric music while incorporating sounds inspired by her time and studies in Spain, India, Guatemala, and Mexico. At this Martyrs’ show, she’ll be accompanied by her longtime band, the saxophone- […]
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Juana Molina’s folktronica is perfect for tumbling down a rabbit hole to wonderland
To experience a Juana Molina concert is to be swept away in a most particular sort of rapture. In the late 80s and early 90s, the Argentine singer-songwriter had a successful career in television and comedy before changing gears to pursue music. An early proponent of combining South American folk music and electronica, Molina introduced […]
Posted inBest of Chicago
Best concert for a cause
On Wednesday, October 13, 2021, the Old Town School of Folk Music’s third annual Indigenous Peoples’ Day Concert shook the rafters of the auditorium with Opliam’s rock-tinged blues, Huguito Gutierrez’s Andean pan flute, and the NuFolk Rebel Alliance’s mishmash of folkloric music, acoustic Americana, and tropical punk. Artist and activist Opliam (aka Liam McDonald, who’s […]
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Singer-songwriter Silvana Estrada conquers heartache on her debut Marchita
On her exquisite debut album, Marchita, Mexican singer-songwriter Silvana Estrada dissects the many bruised facets of a breakup in 11 intimate, elegant tunes. Estrada colors her compositions with her experiences growing up in a family of classical musicians and luthiers as well as her jazz studies at the University of Veracruz. On Marchita, she traces […]
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Helado Negro shares the luminescence of love and survival while tapping into his Latinx heritage
The confessional, artsy electronic songs on Helado Negro’s first six records have always struck deep chords in me. Born Roberto Carlos Lange, the second-generation Ecuadorian American uses subtle musical metaphors to share mixed sentiments stemming from his Latinx heritage—hope, anxiety, and pride, in almost equal measure. On his latest album, Far In (4AD), which comes […]
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Yasser Tejeda brings the Afro-Dominican quijombo to the LatiNxt Festival
The Dominican Republic is famous for merengue and bachata, but Yasser Tejeda prefers to focus on lesser-known varieties of Dominican roots music. He reimagines centuries-old Afro-Dominican styles, especially palo, a form of music traditionally played in the countryside that involves complex call-and-response rhythms created by drums called palos and voices. His elegantly polished compositions contain […]