Join us on Saturday, August 29th from 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm for a special performance by Juan Díes, co-founder of the twice GRAMMY-nominated Sones de México Ensemble. Through live music, bilingual storytelling, and projected visuals, Díes celebrates the Mexican corrido tradition and brings powerful stories of courage, hope, and history to life.

This performance is part of the Corridos of the Semi-quincentennial: Voices of Courage and Hope and is partially supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.

About the project:
Corridos of the Semi-quincentennial: Voices of Courage and Hope is a musical storytelling project developed by the Sones de México Ensemble to honor eight national heroes through the creation and performance of eight new traditional Mexican corridos.

Corridos are epic ballads and heroic tales that date back to the 1840s. They narrate stories and celebrate remarkable acts of courage and defiance from a folk perspective. Join us for a family-friendly presentation of these and other corridos, narrated in Spanish and English by Juan Dies and members of the ensemble, that combines live music, storytelling, projected visuals, and audience interaction. This performance is free and open to the public.

The National Endowment for the Arts is partially sponsoring this project as part of "Celebrating America 250".

About Juan Dies
Juan Díes, folklorist, ethnomusicologist, co-founder of the Chicago-based GRAMMY and Latin GRAMMY-nominated Sones de México Ensemble, and this year's recipient of the NEA National Heritage Fellowship, the nation's highest honor in folk and traditional arts, is an avid performer and teacher of corrido songwriting. For more than 3 0 years, he has led corrido songwriting workshops with children and adults, capturing real stories told by communities across the U.S. In a memorable collaboration with U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera in 2015, the "Corrido of Sandra Bland" emerged, featured on NPR's Latino USA.