Join us as we kick off a week long celebration of Cuba with live music, dance performances poetry and a presentation on Nicolás Guillén!
Opening remarks by Andy Shallal and Ambassador José R. Cabañas Rodríguez. Featuring a mixture of dance, song and percussion of African rituals and Cuban popular music!
Learn more about Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén from Magda Resik Aguirre, Historian from Cuba, with a special reading of the poetry of Nicolás Guillén by Luci Murphy
Magda Resik Aguirre, MSc., Director of Communications and Habana Radio at Havana City Historian’s Office. Master of Heritage Management. She is presenter for the Cuban television show Among Books. She regularly contribute to several Cuban magazines and periodicals such as La Jiribilla, Juventud Rebelde (“Rebel Youth”), Cine cubano (“Cuban Cinema”), and La gaceta de Cuba (“The Cuban Gazette”).
PERFORMANCES BY
Ernesto "Gato" Gatell is one of the most recognized and beloved Cuban singers alive today. In 2013, the U.S. Government acknowledged him as a Musician of Extraordinary Ability at the very top of his field both nationally and internationally, thus allowing him to immigrate to the U.S. in 2014. His list of accomplishments over the past 30 years are far too vast to enumerate, but he has recorded and toured with the biggest names in Afro-Cuban music Clave y Guaguanco, Tata Guines, Changuito, Pancho Quinto, Rumberos de Cuba, Conjunto Folklorico Nacional de Cuba, Puntilla, Hilario Duran, Jane Bunnett; and has been a member of several Cuban All-Star groups. His recordings have been nominated for and/or won the top music industry awards in three countries the U.S. Grammy, the Canadian Juno, and the Cuban CubaDisco.
Yudisleidy Valdes was born and raised in Cuba, where she studied at Escuela Nacional de Arte Samuel Feijoo. She was a professional dancer with Conjunto Folklorico Nacional before moving to the Washington, DC area with her husband, Ernesto Gatell (world-renowned musician/singer from Conjunto Nacional de Cuba, Clave y Guaguanco, Los Rumberos De Cuba), to share her passion for Cuban folkloric dance.
Luci Murphy is a native of D.C. where she is a vocalist who often leads group singing, but “sun-lights” as a medical interpreter of Spanish and English. She has a long history of community activism, especially working with children at risk. A past president of the D.C. League of Women Voters, she has also served on the Steering Committees of the People’s Music Network, "Health Care Now!,” and Washington Inner-city Self Help. She has also been the convener of the Gray Panthers of Metro D.C., an associate producer of Sophie’s Parlor Women’s Radio Collective at WPFW 89.3 FM, the Pacifica Station in D.C. and contact person for the Community Coalition for Peace and Justice. Currently she sings with the SGI New Century Chorus. In 2007, she received the Paul Robeson Award for Peace and Justice from the Friends of the People's Weekly World. In 2012 the Emergence Community Arts Collective gave her its IN HER HONOR Award.
Free and open to all!
