Music of the Americas: Back to Londres

Monday, October 27, 10 am

Charcao Dúo is made up of Luciana Mansilla from the southern coastal city of Puerto Deseado on vocals and percussion and Gabriel Morán from Buenos Aires on guitar. This duo was founded in Santa Cruz in 2020 and recently moved to Los Molles (San Luis). 

Their repertoire consists of Latin American songs, performed in intimate arrangements strongly connected to nature. They have recorded three studio songs, including their first original composition, "Sur del sur," inspired by their years living in Patagonia. "La paciencia, pobrecita" is dedicated to the weavers of northern Argentina and they chose it to honor them and all the people who weave human networks, build communities, and strengthen social ties in times when this task becomes fundamental to life.

Tuesday, October 28, 10 am

Belén Parma is a composer, arranger, and pianist of popular Latin American music born in Catamarca, in northwestern Argentina. She began singing accompanied by the guitar as a child and studied piano at the Conservatorio Mario Zambonini in her native city. Her compositions, based on Argentine folklore, convey a message of gratitude and love for life and the natural environment, as well as her own roots, transformations, and fears. 

In 2018, she released her first album with the project Río y Río, and in 2022, her first work as a composer, the album Cesalpinia. In recent years, she has participated in important events in the region: Argentine Singer-Songwriters at the CCK in Buenos Aires, the Ellaz Cycle at Sala Zitarrosa in Montevideo, the National Jazz Festival in Santiago del Estero, Jallalla Warmi in Tilcara, among others.

From Catamarca, she sent us this original chacarera, one of the most popular song and dance styles of Argentine folk music. Its rhythm combines binary and ternary accents, which gives it a lively and distinctive character. The chacarera blends indigenous roots with Hispanic and African influences, making it one of the most representative expressions of the popular music of the region. 

Wednesday, October 29, 10 am

Founded three years ago, Las Tipas is a quartet that plays Andean instrumental music and Latin American folklore on guitar, percussion, and traditional wind instruments like sikus, quenas, and quenachos. Based in Londres, the members of the group (Eugenia Cortaberría, Malena Puyalto, Inti Diago, and Mariana Cendoya) were born elsewhere in Argentina and were brought together by the local landscapes, music, sounds, and people. 

They sent us "Tempestad," a trote, a Bolivian song by Alejandro Sanchez de Bustamante. 

Thursday, October 30, 10 am

Claudia Guerrero was born in the city of La Rioja and currently lives in neighboring Chilecito. Her music integrates her own folk compositions, urban elements and sounds, and the voices of contemporary musicians and poets. Guerrero has released two EPs featuring her original compositions and collaborations with Santiago Vega: Rincones , released in 2021 and Verano, in 2024. 

"Verano encima" is a canchaya inspired by the feeling of the imminent and long-awaited arrival of summer shared by people from La Rioja. 

Friday, October 31, 10 am

Born in the province of Buenos Aires, Damián Fioravanti started studying music at an early age and later moved to Catamarca, where he currently resides performing, teaching, and composing. 

Inspired by the surrounding landscape and named after a native tree, "Horco Molle" is the first piece he composed in Catamarca. It has a chacarera feel, with interjections of milonga reminiscent of Buenos Aires. Initially an instrumental work, it subsequently demanded lyrics expressing some of the feelings generated by the work, and he performs it outdoors under an horco molle using guitars, clarinet, voice and a looping pedal.

The MetLife Foundation Music of the Americas concert series is made possible by the generous support of Presenting Sponsor MetLife Foundation.

The 2025–2026 series is also supported, in part, by the Howard Gilman Foundation, Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University.