DETAILS
St. Albert Latin Music Extravaganza
Performers will include
- Los Rebeldes Musicales
- Mariachi Mundo
- Marianela Adasme
- Daniel Villalobos
- Alexa Leon
- Roberto Arce
- Carlos Guichon
- Jorge Vargas
The music and dancing will be live from 2 to 5 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 15 at Lions Park. Attendance is free. Please bring your own lawn chair and don’t litter.
Visit www.facebook.com/events/1008763093270017 for more information.
You can almost hear the blisteringly beautiful mariachi music already, can't you? Get ready for the music to move you as this weekend approaches.
“You start listening to Latin music and your feet start," said local musician Jorge Vargas, a self-described mariachi who plays in the style of Carlos Santana.
He is excited for this coming Sunday's first-ever Latin Music Extravaganza at Lions Park. The music and dancing will certainly be muy caliente — "very hot" in English — but he hopes it will mean more and more for the city's growing Latino population.
“We moved to St. Albert three years ago. I started asking about, ‘So what's the scoop with the Latin community here?’ There's no Latin community here in St. Albert … but there are Spanish-speaking people living here,” he began.
“I thought, ‘OK, why don't we start something here?’”
Vargas has definitely started something. The lineup for the event will cover all the bases of Latin blues, Latin rock, Mariachi, Spanish Folk, and Spanish Pop songs, giving everyone in the crowd enough reason to get out of the house, whether you understand the lyrics or not.
The Chilean-born musician hears Latino voices as he walks throughout St. Albert, and he sees the signs of Central and South American influences in pockets of the city. A threshold of the population's attention is about to be reached, he feels.
"We are really excited because now, all of a sudden, there's a whole new interest there," he said, citing the opening of Tienda Latina, a Latin grocery store in Tudor Glen Market.
"What I want to do is to create here a kind of society and to start a Latin festival here in St. Albert."
Vargas has experience co-ordinating and producing events within the Latin community and speaks of great affection for his new home. He wanted to offer "something concrete" as a token of his appreciation to this fair burg, so he is assembling this Latin Music Extravaganza with his friends and their collective resources. He brought his own PA system and instruments to the stage.
He's not only a musician but a teacher of music and Spanish as well. He said he strives to encourage more young people to get into Latin music. When Sunday's fiesta arrives, he might just see an influx of older students clamouring to his door.
"The best motivation is music and food and culture. I thought, why don't we start with something that is very heart of the Latin community, which is music and dance and food," he said, promising, "I'm bringing a super show."
