Kultrún World Music Festival at Victoria Park this weekend
Kultrún World Music Festival coming to Victoria Park this weekend
KITCHENER — Every mid-July, Kultrún in Victoria Park becomes a focal point for music from around the world and within Canada, music that inspires, excites and breaks down cultural barriers.
Kultrún began life as Latin Fest in Waterloo Town Square, but in 2014, the festival moved to Victoria Park, offering more space and less concrete. The move allowed the festival to expand, attracting more vendors, selling everything from African crafts to ice cream.
The free festival was also renamed, opening the line-up to bands from around the world.
“I try to keep a Latin component,” said Chilean-born Isabel Cisterna, artistic director of Neruda Arts, the organization runs the annual festival as well as several events throughout the year. Neruda also operates Kultrún Market, a Regina Street shop selling local and international handmade crafts and jewelry and art.
This year, Kultrún World Music Festival will bring even more world music to its two stages, music from Korea, Mexico, Uganda, Cuba, Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Poland, Venezuela, Mali, Spain and Colombia. As well there are several First Nations performers such as Mohawk singer, Cara Loft, Aaron Bell and the White Pine Dancers, a performance troupe that represents several diffident Indigenous nations.
“Every year the festival gets better,” said Cisterna.
“It’s known in other parts of the world. A few years ago I wouldn’t have had access to these groups but they know this is a well-run festival and their own art will benefit from them being with us.”
As in the past, this year has a theme: Celebrating female musicians. Morena Son, a seven-woman salsa band from Cuba is just one example.
“It’s about time,” Cisterna jokes about choosing to have this festival celebrate women. “Women are often overlooked and under represented.
“We’re putting our words into action.” The festival begins Friday afternoon with “The Conversation: The Condor and The Eagle Prophecy” a sold-out symposium and performance. Friday evening is a fundraising gala featuring “Morena Son” as well as the Spanish performers “Aurora & Mateo” and DJ Fosforita, a.k.a. Angela Vargas, the Toronto-based DJ from Ecuador also known as “DJ Firecracker.” Vargas’ set focuses on her ancestral roots in South American as well as the African diaspora.
The gala takes place at Themuseum in downtown Kitchener, the only ticketed event over the festival weekend. Cisterna hopes the gala will raise at least $5,000 to help offset the cost of bringing so many international performers to Victoria Park, supported through several grants and corporate and private funders.
Kultrún will have a strong Indigenous presence this year, featuring First Nations performers as well as people such as Argentinian Beatriz Pichi Malen, great granddaughter of a chief and heir to the history and culture of her Mapuche People.
The festival also includes a number of special events including storytelling, drum circles, artists’ jams as well as workshops on Spanish Flamenco and Dabke, an Arab folk dance.
As in the past two years, bands will perform at either end of the park: as one band concludes its set, the audience moves to the other side of the park where the next band is already set up. This means it will be non-stop music, no sitting around waiting for one band to leave while the next band sets up.
“People have to engage with each other,” Cisterna said of the world music festival that brings together so many different cultures over a single weekend, including Korean throat singing, a traditional form of vocalizing surprisingly similar to Inuit throat singers.
The term Kultrún, pronounced cooltroon, comes from the Mapuche people of Chile and although it is the name of a drum, there is a deeper symbolism to the word, the spirit of a heartbeat. This is the spirit Cisterna tries to capture.