Afro-Latin Music of the Americas (ALMA) Ensemble Concert (12.02.16) | Latin American Studies

Afro-Latin Music of the Americas (ALMA) Ensemble Concert (12.02.16)

afro latin

Friday 12/2 8pm. CFA Auditorium

The Afro-Latin Music of the Americas (ALMA) Ensemble studies and performs the musical forms of black populations in Latin America and the Caribbean and is dedicated to educating BU students and community about the cultural legacy and social realities of the descendants of Africans in Latin America. The Ensemble is a for-credit, non-auditioned class for students with or without prior music experience. Students learn to play a repertoire of Afro-Latin American secular and spiritual genres, culminating in a concert, and learn about the cultural setting from which these musics arise. The group’s repertoire has included Afro-Colombian currulao, chirimía, alabado, gaita, cumbia, and baile cantado, Puerto Rican plena, landó from Peru, and Afro-Cuban batá, güiro, and güaguancó. The Ensemble is the only collegiate group outside of Colombia to perform the music of Colombia’s Pacific coast, the research specialty of ALMA director and BU professor Michael Birenbaum Quintero.

Statement on Diversity and Inclusion

The Center for Latin American Studies at Boston University is proud of BU’s history of diversity and inclusion. BU’s founders opened the University’s doors to all students without regard to religion, race, or gender, and building and sustaining a vibrant community of scholars, students, and staff remains essential to its mission of contributing to and preparing students to thrive in, an increasingly interconnected world.

Success in a competitive, global milieu depends upon our ongoing commitment to welcome and engage the wisdom, creativity, and aspirations of all peoples and the Center for Latin American Studies is vital to the University’s mission of preparing global citizens. We forge concrete initiatives to integrate faculty and students across the university in the promotion of antiracism, diversity, and inclusion from a Latin American Studies perspective. Through our in-depth and interdisciplinary academic programs, as well as through a rich array of talks, lectures, round-table discussions, conferences, and other educational and cultural events, we assist the University in its efforts to create environments for learning, working, and living that are enriched by racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity.

At the Center for Latin American Studies, we believe in and practice respect for individual differences in life experience, sexual orientation, and religious belief, and we aspire to be free of intellectual parochialism, barriers to access, and ethnocentrism. We appreciate and deeply value the contributions and talents of every member of the Boston University community and invite you to learn more about us.