Great Youth Music
Los Mapaches in Concert
Saturday May 12, 2007
$10 adults, $5 kids - 7pm
Join Los Mapaches, the Latin American Youth Ensemble, for a lively concert of music from the mountains and the coasts of Latin America. A great night for the entire family.
Los Mapaches
If you cross the Trapp Family Singers with a Bolivian street band, the result would probably look a lot like Los Mapaches, the Berkeley-based ensemble directed by music teacher and scholar Lydia Mills. Founded in 1998 by Mills, an aficionado of Latin American music and culture, Los Mapaches features elementary and middle school students who sing and play traditional Latin American songs with indigenous instruments.
Ear-catching, toe-tapping, and characteristically as exuberant as the faces of the children who perform it, the repertoire of Los Mapaches centers on songs of the Andes, but also draws from the music of Mexico and greater Latin America. Most pieces include parts for zampoñas (panpipes), tarkas (Andean recorders), drums, cowbells, whistles, goat horns, and other percussion instruments. Songs with lyrics are usually performed in Spanish, although the group also sings numbers in native Andean languages and some bilingual arrangements.
Like many other great innovations, Los Mapaches began almost by accident. As a teacher in the after-school program at Berkwood Hedge Elementary School in Berkeley, Mills brought in a few zampoñas for her students to try out. The experiment was wildly successful, and Los Mapaches (named by the children for Mills' favorite animal, the raccoon) was officially born. Today, the members of Los Mapaches range from fledgling first graders to teenagers who have been with the group since its inception and now mentor the younger kids.
The group rehearses once a week, and performs by invitation throughout the school year. Los Mapaches has appeared several times at La Peña Cultural Center, at local schools and retirement homes, and at the annual Solano Stroll, where its spirited performance received an Honorable Mention in 2005. The group's first CD, titled, naturally enough, "Los Mapaches," was recorded in 2003.
For audiences, the fresh-faced, multicultural appeal of Los Mapaches is obvious. But for members of the ever-growing Los Mapaches family, now numbering forty-plus, the draw is not only musical. Playing with the group provides valuable instruction in other languages, cross-cultural appreciation, and performance. Perhaps even more important, it provides a strong and sustained sense of camaraderie for its devoted members. As third-grader Ingrid Henderson, a three-year veteran whose closest friends also play with the group, puts it: "I want to be in Los Mapaches for the rest of my life!"
For additional information about Los Mapaches please contact director Lydia Mills at (510) 684-9741.
