Omar Apollo, born Omar Velasco, arrived in the spotlight 21st-century style. The singer-songwriter wrote some tunes on his guitar after going through a bad breakup, uploaded them to a few streaming platforms, and woke up one day to find that he’d racked up tens of thousands of listens to his single “Ugotme” overnight. Since then […]
Author Archives: Catalina Maria Johnson
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Ed Maverick sings Mexican folk songs for crying in your bedroom
At 18 years old, Eduardo Hernández Saucedo, aka Ed Maverick, has already become a viral phenomenon for his sweet, romantic bedroom-folk tunes; his 2018 hit “Fuentes de Ortiz” has topped 100 million streams. His pleasingly deep voice easily conveys yearning in straightforward songs that he builds around simple, colloquial phrases and strummed acoustic guitar—and each […]
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Las Cafeteras don’t believe in borders, musical or otherwise
Chicano indie-folk band Las Cafeteras formed in 2005, after their members forged friendships while taking classes in traditional music, dance, and art at Los Angeles Mexican American cultural center the Eastside Cafe. The six-piece have built a signature hybrid sound rooted in the Afro-Mexican genre son jarocho, which employs a rich mixture of indigenous themes […]
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Tejano music greats Flaco Jiménez and Los Texmaniacs celebrate the sounds of the American southwest
No artist has single-handedly shaped the contemporary soundtrack of the American southwest like Flaco Jiménez. Born in 1939 into a legendary musical family in San Antonio, Jiménez followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather to learn the accordion. He formed his first group at age 16, and in the mid-1960s he arrived on […]
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Bassist and singer-songwriter Tonina casts a spell with soulful multilingual ballads
The first time I heard bassist, guitarist, and singer Tonina Saputo, her voice stopped me in my tracks—her delicate phrasing and heart-wrenching poignancy brought Billie Holiday to mind, except that she was singing in Spanish as well as English. The song was a cover of “Historia de un Amor,” a torchy Panamanian bolero written in […]
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J.S. Ondara creates Americana imbued with the heartache of the immigrant experience
The first time Kenyan singer-songwriter J.S. Ondara heard the music of Bob Dylan, he was blown away. As a bow-tie-wearing, poetry-writing teenager, Ondara often felt out of place among his peers, but listening to America’s most famous folk troubadour inspired him to set his own verses to music. In 2013, at age 20, Ondara won […]
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Rahim AlHaj and Sahba Motallebi create music to heal the wounds of war
During the Iran-Iraq war, Baghdad-born oud master Rahim AlHaj was imprisoned and tortured by Saddam Hussein’s government for his political activism. He fled to Jordan and eventually found refuge in the U.S., settling in Albuquerque in 2000, and there he’s continued to preserve and develop the music of the oud—the pear-shaped, double-coursed string instrument at […]
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Sicangu Lakota rapper Frank Waln chronicles the sounds of the seventh generation rising
Sicangu Lakota rapper, producer, and engineer Frank Waln celebrates and bears witness to the survival of Indigenous peoples in his compositions. Born and raised on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, Waln received his bachelor’s of arts in audio arts and acoustics from Columbia College Chicago and currently lives in Washington Park. He views his […]
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Antonio Sanchez composes jazz-rock anthems that celebrate immigrant journeys
The most immediately striking aspect of Antonio Sanchez’s music is its lush, cinematic feel, which the drummer also demonstrates in the percussion-only music he composed for the 2014 film Birdman. A native of Mexico City, Sanchez began playing drums at age five, and after performing professionally in rock, jazz, and Latin bands in his teens, […]
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Saxophonist Miguel Zenón interprets the music of legendary salsa singer Ismael “Maelo” Rivera
Saxophonist and composer Miguel Zenón is a MacArthur “genius grant” recipient who creates jazz that moves seamlessly between the experimental and the folkloric in an ongoing exploration of his Puerto Rican identity. Many of his 12 studio albums as a bandleader reference and highlight diverse arrays of the island’s genres and musical figures without ever […]
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The Reader’s guide to World Music Festival Chicago 2019
The World Music Festival’s 18 free concerts, spread out over 17 venues, provide us with dozens of opportunities to get to know
our neighbors better—both across the street and around the globe.
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Sávila and Ida y Vuelta take Latinx diasporic beats across the centuries
Portland trio Sávila explore their Mexican roots through the venerable style of cumbia, which spread among popular big bands in the 1950s and remains a staple of family celebrations and weddings throughout the Americas. Launched in 2016 by guitarist and bass-synth player Fabiola Reyna (founder of She Shreds magazine) and vocalist and percussionist Brisa Gonzalez […]
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Jessica Hernandez & the Deltas mix grooves from Detroit, Havana, and Mexico City
Blessed with a dusky wail and a gift for raw, soulful phrasing, Jessica Hernandez has been serving up Motown-infused, retro-tropical sass with her band the Deltas since 2008. The group’s grooves create an unlikely hybrid of flavors from Detroit, Havana, and Mexico City, but Hernandez comes by that mix naturally: her dad is from Havana, […]
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Surabhi Ensemble connects Chicago’s global music community to far corners of the world
The Surabhi Ensemble was founded in 2010 by Indian veena player Saraswathi Ranganathan, director of the Ensemble of Ragas School of Performing Arts in Schaumburg and “Best Asian Entertainer of the Year,” according to the 2018 Chicago Music Awards. The core of the group has included fellow local musical luminaries such as Spanish flamenco guitarist […]
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Okan craft jazzy, heady grooves informed by Afro-Cuban culture and a world of sound
Toronto group Okan make heady, jazzy, superbly crafted music driven by two virtuosos born in Cuba’s cultural capitals: violinist Elizabeth Rodriguez hails from Havana, and percussionist Magdelys Savigne is from Santiago. Rodriguez was a concertmaster for Havana’s Youth Orchestra, and Savigne is trained in orchestral percussion, but since moving to Toronto about five years ago […]