Celebrate Ameri’kana Music and Arts Festival

Founded by the Latin Grammy-nominated band Making Movies, Celebrate AMERI’KANA is a traveling festival celebrating the diverse colors of American music.

The collective AMERI’KANA All-Stars presents a high-energy show that blends the folkloric with the cutting edge and features a rotating cast of incredible leaders in their respective genres. Looking to redefine “Americana,” highlighting the crossroads of the languages and rhythms that make American music.

Making Movies is a band based in the United States with a sound Rolling Stone describes as “an eclectic blend of rumbero percussions, delicate organs, and grungy fuzz rock.” Led by Panamanian singer/guitarist Enrique Chi, on electric guitar, Mexican-American percussionist and keyboardist Juan-Carlos Chaurand, and drummer Duncan Burnett, the band rose to acclaim through a decade of relentless touring in the US and Latin America.

The band collaborated with Rubén Blades on the single “No Te Calles,” which NPR included in their Best of 2019 list and became the opening track of his album Paraiso Road Gang nominated for 2019 Latin Grammy Album of the Year. They have also toured alongside Los Lobos, Ozomatli, Hurray For the Riff Raff, Thievery Corporation, and many more.

Max Baca and Los Texmaniacs are the Past, Present, And Future of Conjunto Music. Combine a hefty helping of Tex-Mex conjunto, simmer with several parts Texas rock, and add a daring dash of well-cured blues and R&B riffs, and you’ve cooked up the tasty Grammy-winning LosTexmaniacs groove.

The band has a wide-ranging experience touring and recording with Flaco Jimenez of Texas Tornados fame, Los Super Seven, and even the Rolling Stones. While Max Baca has participated in eleven Grammy-winning projects, the band themselves won their first Grammy in 2010 and a nomination for their last Smithsonian Folkways recording in 2019, Borders y Bailes – featuring Lyle Lovett and Rick Trevino.

Renee Goust is a Mexican-American singer-songwriter seeking to make historically underrepresented groups visible in Mexican music. Her songs “La cumbia feminazi” and “Querida muerte (No nos maten)” are well-established gender equality hymns in Latin America. Her music has been featured in Billboard, Rolling Stone, and El País, to name a few. Renee has performed at renowned venues like Lincoln Center and the Guggenheim Museum in New York and El Zócalo in Mexico City. She has collaborated with the United Nations, Amnesty International, and LGBTQ+ marches in New York, Mexico City, and La Paz, Bolivia.

For more information visit: artpower.ucsd.edu