Mafer Bandola

Mafer Bandola is a bandola llanera performer, self-thought composer, community organizer, and educator. With a grounded understanding of the bandola llanera (male-dominated) traditions, she focuses on bringing the instrument to a new artistic path through composition, performance, and improvisation.

As a teaching artist, she works for The Lullaby Project, an initiative Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute. The program pairs parents and caregivers with professional artists to write and sing personal lullabies for their babies, supporting maternal health, aiding childhood development, and strengthening the bond between parent and child. She also works for the Afro-Latin Jazz Alliance (ALJA), a performing and educational organization that aims to preserve the music of the Americas, emanating from African and indigenous roots, through the entry point of jazz.

Mafer created and hosts “Pipiris Nights,” the first recurring, community-focused series of Venezuelan Joropo music and dance in New York.

Her creative process with LADAMA brings sounds and compositions around the theme of resilient female voices through an intersectional approach. 

@maferbandola

Lara Klaus

Lara Klaus is a Brazilian multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer, educator and music therapist. Lara focused on mastering traditional percussion such as pandeiro, alfaia, zabumba and other world music instruments along with the rhythms of Northeast Brazil. She has played at festivals around the world including the Montreux Jazz Festival (Switzerland) and has performed and taught all-ages workshops throughout South America, Europe and the United States. Lara has been featured in ensembles with renowned Brazilian musicians including Luciano Magno, Elba Ramalho, Roberto Mescal and Moraes Moreira. She participates in the NGO Integrarte, where she works with musicians with Down syndrome, and for several years she was musical director of the Maracaarte percussion group. In March 2018 Lara released her debut solo album entitled "Força do Gesto", with music production by Tomaz Alves and Lara herself.

Daniela serna

Daniela Serna is a Colombian composer, percussionist, educator and sound artist. As both a performer and educator, she has spent the last ten years working with traditional Caribbean Colombian rhythms such as bullerengue, gaita, cumbia, porro and fandango music styles. Well versed in global rock and pop, her travels have taken her to Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay and Argentina. She is the founder of La Perla an all-female Caribbean folk band, recent winners of the XXXI Festival de Gaita larga Francisco Llirene in Ovejas, Sucre. In 2014 she presented “Bullerengue Covers,” a sound installation exploring the sonics of tambour alegre (hand drum) and surrounding space for which El Puente, her experimental duo with Uva Lunera, composed the music. In 2012 she won a Señal Radio Colombia contest to perform with legendary folk-singer bullerengue queen Petrona Martínez.