Xiomara Fortuna to Perform at Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture in April

Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture will present Xiomara Fortuna on Saturday, April 1, 2023 at 8:00 p.m. on the stage of the Repertory Theater at Hostos Community College, 450 Grand Concourse (at 149 th Street), in the Bronx. Xiomara Fortuna is the Dominican Republic's queen of Afro-Caribbean fusion with over 40 years of visionary artistic work - fusing ancestral Caribbean music with rock, hip-hop, jazz, merengue, bachata, funk, reggae...and more! A transcendental singer, she creates new sounds and styles, giving her music a different yet very familiar Caribbean feel. Performing new songs from her 17th and most recent album, Eta que tú ves, she will showcase - live on stage with drums, percussion, bass & vocals - the cultural richness of the Dominican Republic. and the Caribbean.

Tickets are on sale at www.hostoscenter.org or at the Hostos Box Office, open Mon-Fri, from 1pm to 4pm and 2 hours before the shows. Call for tickets at (718) 518-4455.

ABOUT XIOMARA FORTUNA

Xiomara Fortuna was born in 1959 in Montecristi, in the Dominican Republic's northwest region, near the Haitian border, where she heard the native folk rhythms of the mangulina. Her mother was always singing while she cooked or cleaned the house. She taught Xiomara the songs of the farmers and shoemakers. Xiomara also listened to socially conscious Cuban music on Radio Rebelde (Rebel Radio), broadcast from Cuba. Some of her favorites were Cuban nueva trova singers Silvio Rodríguez and Pablo Milanés. Xiomara's first songs and lyrics were composed while she was in high school, accompanying herself with an acoustic guitar. She later studied at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD) in the nation's capital. Xiomara performed in the capital and also traveled throughout the Dominican Republic. Xiomara studied Brazilian music and listened to American jazz recordings. Soon she became very interested in the rhythms from the other islands and the different kinds of jazz. She became a member of the group Kaliumbé, where she honed her musical style inspired by traditional Caribbean music, specifically the music of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. In 1999, she released what is regarded as her masterpiece: Kumbajei. A towering manifesto, the album poured decades of investigation into songs connecting the exuberance of Caribbean palo rituals with polyrhythms from Congo and Nigeria, and parallel influences from reggae and even country music.

In 2022, Fortuna released two records; the hip-hop inflected Entre Luna y Babia, produced with Dominican jazz prodigy Isaac Hernández, and the lush acoustic compendium ETA QUE TÚ VES, which explored the many musical, idiomatic, and culinary bonds between Africa and the diaspora. This most recent EP was produced alongside longtime collaborator Rafa Payán, one of the co-founders of emblematic Dominican pop-rock outfit Tribu Del Sol. On it, lyrical motifs are broken into "viajes" (or, "journeys"), drawing heavily from a 2009 trip she took to Nigeria and Benin.

Her discography includes De la Loma al Llano (1985), Balbuceos (1996), Pan Music and Música Raíces (1997), Kumbajei (2001), Ella ta' í (2002), Tonada para un Querer (2004), La Calle Será La Calle (2009), Paseando (2010), Tonada para un Querer (2014), Son Verdad (2018), Canto de Abril (2020), Viendoaver (2021).

ABOUT THE HOSTOS CENTER FOR THE ARTS & CULTURE

The Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture consists of a museum-grade art gallery, a 367-seat Repertory Theater, and a 900-seat Main Theater, presenting artists of national and international renown. It is easily accessible from Manhattan, Queens and New Jersey and is a mere 15 minutes by subway from midtown Manhattan. www.hostoscenter.org

ABOUT HOSTOS COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Hostos Community College is an educational agent for change, transforming and improving the quality of life in the South Bronx and neighboring communities since 1968. Hostos serves as a gateway to intellectual growth and socioeconomic mobility, and a point of departure for lifelong learning, success in professional careers, and transfer to advanced higher education programs. Hostos Community College is part of CUNY, the nation's leading urban public university serving more than 480,000 students at 24 colleges. https://www.hostos.cuny.edu/