Kickstarter

We're throwing a Son Jarocho festival! We've invited amazing bands from Veracruz, Mexico as well as Jarocho fusion bands, Electro-Jarocho bands, Jarocho Rock bands, cross-border collaborations, and more. We'll have fim showings, workshops with Jarocho masters, and community fandangos. Help us make it happen! We need your support to raise the funds to bring the bands and bring it all together. 

The festival will be at the Brava Theater in San Francisco from August 16-19th and the whole Son Jarocho community is invited to participate. Thank you!

What is Son Jarocho? 

Son Jarocho is a folkloric style of music from the Veracruz region of Mexico, that uses Mexican guitars called, jaranas, requintos Jarocho, Leonas, sometimes harp, and uses a percussive style of dancing on a wooden platform called a tarima. It’s often pointed to as an example of the African influence in Mexican music (Veracruz is a port city on the Caribean coast of Mexico). It’s a musical style that has really been passed down through generations and has been jealously guarded by it’s community. In this way it has partially resisted commercialization and stayed intact as a folk music tradition,  and it’s become a way for Latinos here in the United States to really connect with their roots as they search for a complex identity. Son Jarocho represents a link to historical traditions.

At the same time, some Chicano artists here have taken that folk element and fused it with urban elements, really pushing the envelope. Quetzal, a great Jarocho-Rock band from East LA, has been doing this amazing blend of traditional Son Jarocho with very artsy rock music. Sistema Bomb has created a blend of electronic dance music with synthesizers and heavy beats with old-style Jarocho musicians in a cross-border collaboration. We’re also bringing amazing traditional Son Jarocho bands from Mexico like Los Cojolites and Pa’Sumecha, which will cost a lot of money. 

 We really need your help to make this historic festival happen, please contribute to our project and help us with all of the costs we have to put the festival on. Look at some of the great rewards we have, and also PLEASE help us spread the word, post this to your friends and networks, send out emails, and help us out any way we can. We really appreciate it! Thanks so much on behalf of the Greater Son Jarocho community.