Encuentro del Canto Popular concert will take place at Brava Theater on Friday, Dec 3 & Saturday, Dec. 4. The venue is located at 2781 24th (corner of York St) in San Francisco. Doors open at 7:00 pm. Program starts at 8:00 pm Tickets available at the door. General $17, Seniors/Students $13.
Join us as we celebrate 40 years of independent bilingual community journalism with two evenings of amazing local musical talent.
After surviving four decades on little more than passion and the dedication of generations of volunteers, El Tecolote — along with many other small and medium non-profits — is struggling. We’ve reduced expenses and staff stipends to the bare minimum. Please attend this fundraising concert and help ensure that El Tecolote can continue to serve the community we care about. And bring a friend!
If you can’t attend, please send a tax-deductible donation payable to Acción Latina, the publisher of El Tecolote. Send or drop off donations at 2958 24th St., San Francisco, CA 94110. Or donation online at www.eltecolote.org.
The first issue of El Tecolote newspaper rolled off the printing press on Aug. 24, 1970. The newspaper was the brainchild of Juan Gonzales, who had recently graduated with a journalism degree from San Francisco State University. The newly established Raza Studies department had asked Gonzales to develop media curriculum and then hired him to teach a class. Experiencing the lack of journalists of color in the mainstream media first hand as a new reporter for the United Press International (UPI) first hand, Gonzales decided to use his class to recruit and channel more Latinos in journalism careers.
But Gonzales thought the newspaper needed to be based in the community and El Tecolote soon moved to the Mission district where it has remained ever since.
El Tecolote started as an all-volunteer effort and it remains 95 percent so today. The longevity of the newspaper is partially due to a commitment to its original principles: to serve as a pipeline to journalism careers; to avoid advertising from the tobacco, alcohol and military industries; to provide bilingual news; and to provide a fuller, more complex portrait of the Latino community.
The newspaper has provided free journalism training to over a thousand people, including providing place where high school and college journalism students can perfect their craft.
It has reviewed countless local, national and international artists of all media, giving many their first media coverage. It has published the work of local and emerging creative writers and poets when they couldn’t afford to be published elsewhere.
El Tecolote’s new multimedia web site at www.eltecolote.org now gives us the opportunity to provide multimedia training to the community.
El Tecolote’s 40-year newspaper and photographic archive is a unique historical snapshot of the Mission’s cultural, social and political development.
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Friday, December 3rd, 2010 7pm @ the Brava Theatre
La Familia Peña-Govea
When local recording artist, bandleader, composer and musician Miguel Govea began performing music with three women in his life he created the Mission’s own local familial lyrical convergence: La Familia Peña-Govea.
For the last 25 years Miguel Govea has led and accompanied various musical ensembles, which include Los Compas, La Familia Peña-Govea, Cascada de Flores, Futuro Picante, Los Peludos, Dr. Loco’s Rockin’ Jalapeño Band and Agustín Lira and Alma. A long time Bay Area Latin music phenomenon, Govea performs wherever Latin music aficionados gather, from local dance clubs and bars to the San Jose Jazz Festival and the Cotati Accordion Festival.
Now accompanied by his wife, Susan, and their two daughters — Rene and Cecilia — as La Familia Peña-Govea, this talented musical family plays a mixture of traditional Tex-Mex and Colombian music. “René at 15,” La Familia Peña-Govea’s first CD recording, featured a range of rancheras, valses, polkas, boleros, vallenatos and even included a danzón. Each of the Goveas proves to be nibble-fingered and predisposed to festive, dance-able rhythms. Miguel’s experience in orchestrating larger groups shines through in La Familia Peña-Govea’s music, where they seamlessly coordinate the range of traditional instruments and progressions into a cohesive groove. The harmonious duets between Miguel and his wife ring with a sublime simplicity that encourages the audience to sing along. Theirs is a dynamic, ear-pleasing contrast between her delicate feminine timber and his deeper singing. La Familia Peña-Govea is continuing the rich legacy of Latino music in the Bay Area, and they are doing it together in style.
Futuro Picante
Although made up entirely of youth vocalists and musicians, Futuro Picante’s sound is far from elementary. With ages ranging from nine to 18 years old their repertoire of vivacious Latin jazz includes both salsa’s golden age classics and original compositions from local artists, such as their community shout-out “La Mission.”
The group was formed in 2003 when Jose Leon, the Youth Director of the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, began a summer Latin Jazz Band program. His aim was to provide low-cost training for neighborhood youth interested in music and to pass on the Latin music traditions to the next generation. With the help of co-director Miguel Govea, Leon assembled his first group of promising youth musicians. The group has been wowing audiences ever since.
The complex and yet simultaneously united texture of their music, layering fluttering flute solos with Cuban percussion, energetic trumpet melodies, jazzy keyboard stylings and an array of powerful vocalists, earned them the title of San Francisco’s “2010 Best Kid Band” by SF Weekly. Futuro Picante proved their sonic and aesthetic diversity last May when they performed 1960’s-style Latin Boogaloo in Austin Powers-inspired costumes on the Mission Cultural Center’s Carnival parade float for four hours. With their fresh, enthusiastic sound and a maturity of musicianship beyond their years, the members of Futuro Picante have indeed proven to be the zesty future of Latin music while honoring the legacies of Tito Puente, Beny Moré, Ca Tjader, Pérez Prado, and Mongo Santamaria.
The group also takes the great pride in its large inclusion of female musicians among its ranks, including horn players, bassists, keyboardists, vocalists and composers. The group has become an inspirational symbol of the positive direction community youth can take with guidance and support from local elders.
Saturday, December 4th, 2010 7pm @ the Brava Theatre
Loco Bloco
Central to Loco Bloco’s purpose and programming is the use of the arts as a tool for the empowerment of youth of color to overcome injustice; to adopt healthy, active lifestyles; to contribute positively to and serve as leaders in their communities and to embrace ethnic and cultural diversity.
Community artists and activists founded Loco Bloco as a nonprofit arts organization in 1994 to provide low-income, minority and immigrant families access to professional-level arts education at no cost. Since Loco Bloco’s inception more than 6,000 youth and their families passed through their programs, with many youth returning to mentor younger members. Loco Bloco’s drumming and dancing troupe pack a gigantic wallop that will shake your soul and unhook your hips. Their heavily percussion-based music is a potent mezcla of African, Brazilian, Hip Hop, Latin and Funk, which is matched with high-energy dance routines. Loco Bloco’s young dancers have a repertoire that matches the diversity of their musician counterparts, jiving to everything from samba to African and hip hop dances. Their performances include troupes of young stiltwalkers towering overhead as the dancers and drummers pound out their vigorous beats. They perform annually for an array of parades and celebrations, including both the SF Carnaval Parade, where they were selected Grand Prize winner three years in a row, and the SF Pride Parade.
The Afro-Cuban Jazz Ensemble of San Francisco State University
The Afro-Cuban Jazz Ensemble of San Francisco State University was formed in 1999 and is dedicated to preserving and performing Cuban popular music and other related Latin American music genres. The 25-member ensemble is open to all students at the university and through SFSU’s Open University program extends its enrollment to the Bay Area community at large. The mission of the ensemble is to expose the larger listening audiences of the Bay Area to the richness of Cuban music that has so influenced American music since the 19th century. Just as importantly, the ensemble performs other styles of music from South and Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean and the U.S. in a demonstration of the cultural interconnectedness and solidarity that exists throughout the Americas.
The ensemble performs regularly on campus and also contributes to the social and musical fabric of the Bay Area with performances at jazz clubs such as Coda Lounge and Ana’s Jazz Island. It has performed at the SF Carnaval for the last six years and does yearly benefits for Clínica Martín Baró and Daniel Webster Elementary School. The ensemble was also part of SF State’s International Arts Center tribute and documentary to the great Cuban bass player Israel “Cachao” Lopez at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in March of 2005.
John Calloway, director of the ensemble, is a Grammy-nominated multi-instrumentalist, composer, educator and social activist. He has been a mainstay in the Bay Area music scene since the mid-1970s, having performed with J. Omar Sosa, Israel “Cachao” Lopez, Dizzy Gillespie, Jesus Diaz, John Santos and Pete Escovedo. Calloway is on faculty in both the School of Music and Dance and the Ethnic Studies Department of SFSU and gives lectures and workshops on music, the arts and social change throughout the region. Currently he serves on the SF Arts Commission and on several arts advisory boards in the Bay Area.