Quirjerema

Quijeremá’s dynamic reinterpretation of Latin American music is showcased in selections from their forthcoming project and CD “Al Son del Tunduki” - a musical journey to unearth and celebrate the importance of the African Diaspora in the Americas. Their music features traditional instruments, vocal poetry and merges jazz, classical and world idioms to create a unique musical experience. Quijeremá performs on Saturday, May 18 at the Arcata Playhouse.

Quijeremá infuses their original contemporary Latin American compositions with a deep sense of unique ancient musical traditions. New with primal, the real and ethereal permeate each performance—an amalgam of Quijeremá’s mastery of traditional music and the present. Still, the blending of rhythm, texture, and color in their music is seamless, transparent and one-of-a-kind. Captivating audiences over the course of an eight-year, five-album career; this fine-tuned San Francisco Bay Area based quintet of world musicians has performed nationally and internationally, including concerts for the President of Chile and the Venezuelan government, and was a 2009 IDA nominee for best musical soundtrack for their PBS documentary “Archeology of Memory”.

With these enticing New Latino-Americana grooves Quijeremá has been able to break cultural barriers in their concerts. The ensemble has performed throughout the US, Canada and Latin America, including collaborations with a variety of distinguished international musicians such as John Santos, Anthony Blea, Manuel Moreno, Mads Tolling, as well as members of renowned Chilean groups: Congreso, Illapu, The Latin American Sax Quartet, La Pedro Band, Entrama, and Santiago del Nuevo Extremo. In 2006 they were invited to Venezuela to perform as part of the Fiesta de la Diversidad Cultural music festival. In 2007 they were invited to inaugurate the memorial amphitheater Parque por la Paz Villa Grimaldi, and toured in Santiago, Chile.

As writer Willy Lizarraga states, Quijeremá “...manages to render a whole constellation of South American rhythms into a jazz idiom... how the cueca from Chile, tango from Argentina, waltz at its most Latin, landó from Peru, joropo from Venezuela, huaino from the Andes fuse into a musical continuum whose identity, no matter how jazzy, always remains rooted in the deep South, not of the U.S. but of the Americas.”

Tickets are $12, $10 for students and Playhouse members. They are available at Wildberries Marketplace, Wildwood Music and online at brownpapertickets.com or reserve at (707) 822-1575. The Arcata Playhouse is located at 1251 9th Street in Arcata. ~ submitted