The Origins of Cumbia Workshop!

FREE / DONATIONS ENCOURAGED

La Peña Presents: The Origins of Cumbia Workshop!
Thursday, April 6 at 7pm. (Doors open at 6:4pm.)

Learn about the history of cumbia, how to play cumbia rhythms and how traditional instruments are made! The workshop is family-friendly and ANY size donation is encouraged to support the instructors’ travel expenses.

This is a GREAT opportunity for anybody that wants to deepen their knowledge of this traditional music form that dates back to the 17th century in Colombia. Since its inception, cumbia has traveled the Americas and found a home everywhere, morphing into the sound that describes each culture it finds.

Instructors Kiko, Shango and Jaime are touring California to share their ancestral knowledge of Colombian cumbia. They will show you the instruments and the rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic patterns that form the traditional sounds. Not only will they show you how to play these instruments and rhythms, but how to make the instruments themselves!

Cumbia was born of a cultural mix of African and indigenous backgrounds and is a musical tradition that symbolizes survival and resistance to colonization. This tradition is a symbol of black and brown unity that is a story of the past, present, and future.

About the instructors:
Shangó Dely comes from a musical family and is a percussionist from Colombia. He has toured with many groups including Carlos Vives, Emilio Estefan and Carlos Santana.

Kiko Villamizar was raised in Medellin and learned Latin American folk music through his family. He studied jazz in Miami and has recently released an album, “Aguas Frías”, which fuses a variety of Latin American regional sounds from the Andes to the Caribbean.

Jaime Ospina has studied Afro-Colombian music with renowned Colombian maestros like Catalino Parra, Encarnacion Tovar, and Antonio Garcia.