Argelia Fragoso and Susana Baca will share the stage in Lima, Perú

August 31, 2018

The most important media outlets in Peru have echoed the concert that local artist Susana Baca will perform tomorrow, Wednesday the 29th at the Gran Teatro Nacional in Lima, Peru, to which the prestigious singer, winner of two Latin Grammy Awards, has invited Cuban Argelia Fragoso, known as "the Golden Voice of Cuba". The concert titled Quiéreme, takes its name from the album that they recorded together in June 2016 at the Abdala Recording Studios in Havana, for the record label Colibrí from the island of Cuba and the Peruvian Pregón.

Quiéreme, its protagonists have explained, was conceived as an album to fall in love with, whose love-themed content takes a journey through the work of popular poets from Peru and Cuba. "A new mischief, we thought about it to come together and create new roots, and hopefully it will make us all happier. It's an album about romance in Latin America, there are boleros, Peruvian waltzes, a tango," Susana told the national press during the days they were recording the first phonogram they have created together.

The idea for this album was born after the Peruvian's presentation in 2014 at the Third Meeting of Popular Voices organized by Fragoso, an event that has featured fellow Peruvian Tania Libertad, Mexican Lila Downs, Spanish duo Amaral, Dominican Maridalia Hernández, Uruguayan Jorge Drexler and Colombian Totó La Monposina, among other international artists alongside local artists.

"We wanted to show the quintessential expressions of romanticism in Latin America and the Caribbean that range from the songs Cariño by Acosta Ojeda, El huerto de mi amada by Felipe Pinglo or Pensamiento by Rafael Gómez "Teofilito" and Sombra que besa by Isolina Carrillo, these last two Cuban authors, to the Argentine tango Los Mareados," Susana Baca also told the press. Among other authors that appear on Quiéreme are Alberto Condemarín and Chabuca Granda, a woman ahead of her time who knew how to maintain the mestizo roots of the Peruvian waltz.

Regarding her relationship with Cuban music, the distinguished Peruvian interpreter commented in Cuba that she loves everything about it. "It's part of my childhood," she said, "my mother was a woman who very much enjoyed listening to Bola de Nieve and the danzones, dancing them, she was a great dancer, it was she who connected me from my earliest years with Cuban music. The son for me is a very beautiful musical creation because, and I have been able to experience it here a few years ago, the artists improvise and that is a wonderful creative work."

For Argelia Fragoso, Peruvian music is not unfamiliar as in her extensive repertoire, she usually includes songs such as La flor de la canela by Chabuca Granda and Nuestro secreto by Félix Pasache, recorded in her album Entre nosotros. "Working together," says Fragoso, "has been very pleasant and an enriching experience. Susana Baca is a great artist, one of the great voices of Latin American song."