The Santa Fe Plaza Concert Series invites Santa Feans and visitors alike to gather and enjoy great live music together in the 400-year-old historic heart of Santa Fe for FREE!
-Feel free to bring chairs to the concert.
-This is an alcohol-free event.
-Bring your water bottle, as we will have water stations on site.
-There is a city parking garage on West San Francisco Street across from the Lensic.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

NOVALIMA
Started by four friends from Lima with a shared passion for traditional Afro-Peruvian music and global DJ culture, Novalima stands in the common ground bridging past and future, uniting tradition and innovation.
From their humble start, file-sharing musical ideas and producing their first album in separate countries at the dawn of the internet, Novalima is now a live musical force revered worldwide for breaking boundaries and uniting seemingly irreconcilable genres, communities, and generations. They have created an inspiring movement and revolutionized the music scene in their native Peru by bridging a longstanding divide between the mainstream and the minority Afro-Peruvian community, who have struggled against discrimination and cultural dissolution for generations.

During their career, Novalima has garnered worldwide critical acclaim from mainstream (NPR, UK Guardian, Wall Street Journal, La Presse, Metro, Billboard), delivered legendary performances around the world at festivals such as Roskilde, WOMAD, NYC Central Park, Montreal Jazz Festival and Chicago’s Millennium Park, earned a Latin Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Album, and were featured in cult filmmaker Robert Rodriguez’s hit Mexploitation movie Machete.

While their sound is futuristic and cutting-edge, the roots of Novalima’s music reach back hundreds of years. In a far-too familiar tale, African slaves were brought to Peru as early as the 1500s until the middle of the 19th Century, establishing an outpost of the African-Diaspora on the Pacific coast of South America. Over the years, the soul and rhythms of Africa melded with the melodies and instruments of Europe and the Andes. The result is rich musical repertoire that existed for generations on the periphery of Peruvian popular culture.

BARACUTANGA
Making people dance is about more than a good time for Baracutanga, it’s part of their message. Baracutanga’s joyful music is a fusion, but it’s an organic one, the product of the members' combined musical backgrounds and interests. Kilko Paz, who most often plays the charango, and guitarist Tito Rios, are from Bolivia, bass player Carlos Noboa is from Ecuador, and powerhouse vocalist Jackie Zamora hails from Peru, while drummers and percussionists Nick Baker and David Flores, guitarist/accordion player Casey Mraz, and Micah Hood, who plays trombone and flutes, are from the US. Some members are university trained, others are self-taught musicians.

The members of the band met in Albuquerque in 2009 and connected over their love of Brazilian music. Their first sessions together were drum jams in the raucous samba style known as batucada. Though they soon began exploring more rhythms, you can still hear plenty of Brazil in their sound. Today, they are as much a borderless musical community as they are a band. Some shows will see as many as nine musicians on stage, plus Afro-Latin dancers.

The collective’s spirit of openness and community extends to their audience and tends to be infectious. Their live shows always bring the party to whatever venue they are in. “Our main characteristic is that, wherever we go and play, people dance,” Kilko says. As people across South America well know, huayno, cumbia, and samba are easy to dance to and hard not to dance to. Mix them together and you’ve got quite the recipe on your hands. Nick promises, “Whether you have learned to dance a cumbia or samba, you’re going to dance anyway.” Still, this band isn’t taking any chances, and often hold workshops with dance instructors as part of their events.

Baracutanga is touring soon. At every stop they will be leaving behind sweaty audiences and, hopefully, the world a little closer to their harmonious ideal.