MaFer Bandola (she/her)
A bandola llanera player, producer, self-taught composer, community organizer, actor, and educator from Barquisimeto, Venezuela, living in New York.
As she grew up with an Afro-Indigenous oral tradition inspired by the relationship of the inhabitants of the High Plains of Venezuela (Los Llanos) with nature, She developed a grounded understanding of the bandola llanera (male-dominated) traditions; she focused on bringing the instrument to a new artistic path through composition, performance, and improvisation. In addition, MaFer innovated within the practice, investigating and channeling the female experience of a Latinx musician in a globalized world.
Mobéy Lola Irizarry (they/she)
Mobéy is a genderqueer composer, improviser, multi-instrumentalist, painter, and transdisciplinary artist. Based in Brooklyn, they hail from the Puerto Rican diaspora in Hartford, CT, and are a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. She makes within the lineages of decolonial uprisings, collections of tiny mirrors at queer clubs, and things that come from trees. Mobéy is a cofounder and composer for Las Mariquitas, NYC’s Queer and Trans-centered Salsa band, and a member of the experimental performance trio Dendarry Bakery and the Latin Rock outfit AVATAREDEN. In 2023 alone she has performed at the Denver Art Museum, the Shed, was a resident artist at CEPA in Puerto Rico, established Las Mariquitas’ “Salserx Futurism” residency in collaboration with the bar Cmon Everybody, and co-composed a ballet with Dendarry Bakery and choreographer Arthur Aviles for the New York Theatre Ballet and the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. Lola’s solo album Seka’s Dream released May 2023 on Panapen Records and Funnybone Records.
Omarjadhir Flores aka DJ Pocket (he/him)
Born in Bayamon, Puerto Rico (April 30,1984) Recently moved to New Jersey/New York Since 2006, PocKet has been working on a proposal that involves multidisciplinary performances that mix electronic house music with African, Latin and Caribbean rhythms. He is an extravagant character, sometimes erotic, animal, spiritual, androgenic or masked, who invites visitors to fun and mystical musical presentations that combine theatre, dance and visual arts.
Website: www.omarjadhir.com
IG: @pocket.arte
FB: @pocket.arte / @omarjadhir