Cantos de Latinoamérica + Music Performance by legendary Nicaraguan musician Carlos Mejía Godoy!

Palenke Arts is excited to present, in partnership with the Watsonville Film Festival, Cantos de Latinoamérica, an evening of film and music centered around the Latine experience. 

The event will begin with the ceremonial red carpet reception, followed by the screening of three documentary shorts about artists and storytellers from México, Ecuador, and Nicaragua, an audience Q&A with director Jon Silver and a short concert by Nicaraguan legendary singer songwriter Carlos Mejía Godoy accompanied by musicians  Jorge Nicoya Rivera and Daniel Franco.

1. Living in exile (Documentary, 14 minutes) Forced into exile and now living in California, Carlos Mejía Godoy is a legendary musician and poet of Nicaragua’s Sandinista Revolution of the 1970s-80s. Mejía Godoy shares his music, poetry and paintings as he reflects on Nicaragua’s historic fight for liberty and the betrayal of the original Sandinista Revolution.

2. I am the Queen/So soy la Reyna (Documentary, 16 minutes) A journey through the words of the soprano Mixe María Reyna, a journey through a childhood marked by domestic violence, the ultra-conservatism of the indigenous communities of southern Mexico, and the desire to go out and discover a world “beyond the mountain”.

3. Maura (Documentary, 17 minutes)

84-year-old Maura is the guardian of a very particular tradition in danger of extinction. She is a singer of amorfinos, verses full of humor that will disappear forever with her departure.