Direct from Colombia! Champeta singer Louis Towers, with Palenke, brings danceable afro-Colombian rhythms to UPENN—for a free show at the Rotunda, Oct. 13th at 7pm.


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Direct from Colombia! Champeta singer Louis Towers, with Palenke, brings danceable afro-Colombian rhythms to UPENN—for a free show at the Rotunda, Oct. 13th at 7pm.

Philadelphia, PA – September 24th, 2009

“Champeta is a hybrid music” says music writer Craig Havighust, “unique to its home city because of Cartagena’s history as a slave trading capital, a Spanish colonial stronghold, and a port city. Through the 1960s and 70s, guys from many nations worked the freighter traffic between Africa and Caribbean ports of call. Records changed hands and criss-crossed the Gulf and the Atlantic Ocean. Reggae and dub music mingled with Colombian cumbia and Afro-pop and juju. Bob Marley, meet King Sunny Ade.”

Artist Louis Towers hails from the storied town of Palenque San Basilio, founded in the sixteenth century by escaped slaves who wrung repeated peace treaties from Spanish troops seeking to re-enslave them. Towers sings in Spanish but also speaks Palenquero, the Afro-Creole language still heard in San Basilio—and what comes across in his upbeat, get-you-moving tracks is Palenque’s message of pride and zest for life.

The show is organized by Penn professors Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, Tim Rommen, and Tukufu Zuberi, who will host the show at the Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St, on October 13th.

Towers' music is on myspace, http://www.myspace.com/louistowerselrasta, and he has a new video filmed in Palenque that is viewable on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5qKlq4ZoNQ. The organizers thank our co-sponsors at UPENN: Latin American and Latino Studies, the Ethnohistory Program, and the Center for Africana Studies, as well as the Departments of Music and Romance Languages. Additional thanks go out to the Penn Humanties Forum, DuBois College House, and La Casa Latina. The show is free to the public thanks to a grant from the Greater Philadelphia Latin American Studies Consortium.

Contact Information: Ann Farnsworth-Alvear or Migdalia Carrasquillo, Latin American and Latino Studies, University of Pennsylvania. lals@sas.upenn.edu, 375 Claudia Cohen Hall, UPENN, Philadelphia, PA 19104. 215-898-9919.