QUIQUE ESCAMILLA

Fueled by sociopolitical commentary and music that honors his Mexican  heritage, Quique Escamilla celebrates the music and rhythms of the Americas.

JUNO Award winning Quique Escamilla is a Mayan-Mestizo singer-songwriter from Chiapas, Mexico. He is now a producer and international touring artist based in Toronto, Canada. Quique's powerful voice and impassioned delivery cut past language boundaries while combining classic Mexican, and Afro-Amerindian rhythms of the Americas, such as ranchera, huapango, cumbia, and bolero, with contemporary elements of folk, rock, reggae, and blues.

His latest album, Encomienda, features stories that raise Indigenous Peoples' voices, untold realities and inequalities across the Americas, while attempting to decimate the repercussions of colonization, racism, and xenophobia around the globe. Quique says "Every performance is an opportunity to stimulate the human intellect and conscience, with potential to help effect positive change in this world…”

"Quique represents a modern version of a Pan-American Troubadour fusing traditional Latin American styles in an unassuming manner and built upon solid musicianship... – Marc Fournier, SONGLINES Magazine, UK

LA MANGA

La Manga is a cultural identity laboratory that is inspired by the spirit and ancestry of the great Caribbean musical diaspora where Colombia, Puerto Rico and Venezuela meet and bond. Honoring black and indígena oral traditions; connecting with the power of tambores Afro-Colombianos and celebrating life through storytelling and bailes cantaos. This brand new project is the work of a collective of women artists composed of Daniela Serna; Mafer Bandola, Andrea Chavarro; Katherine Ocampo and Lina Fernanda Silva. You can follow this Brooklyn-based collective on instagram as @lamangabk

The band met at a rueda de bullerengue and rumba cubana at Prospect Park last summer (2022) and a few months later in December (2022) began to study and learn how to play Afro-Colombian percussion (Tambora, Maracas and llamador).

Daniela Serna, La Manga musical director is an investigator and an ambassador of Colombian Caribbean rhythms, for 16 years she has been traveling to visit Festivals and elders in small villages like Puerto Escondido, San Juan de urabá, Ovejas, San Jacinto and Palenque to learn the tambor alegre language having the opportunity to study and share music with elders, (Emilsen Pacheco and Petrona Martinez) children and diverse communities to understand that beyond the joy this rhythms transmit there's a powerful story of black and indigena resistance and resilience.

Hence she decided to create and foster a community of women around these traditions using percussion as a portal to connect these universes here in New York, that is La Manga.

La Manga´s first residency was at the iconic Brooklyn venue Barbés and so far they have been invited to perform at Nublu, Wild Birds, The Museum of the city of New York, Moma PS1, The Eldridge museum and the Bronx Music Heritage Center.

Quique Escamilla header photo credit: Dan Brown
Quique Escamilla thumbnail photo credit: Lisa MacIntosh
La Manga photo credit: @ricardoacanyc