After an outstanding performance at Detroit’s Concert of Colors, La Chiva Gantiva, the Belgium based band headed to Canada as part of their 2015 Summer Tour and performed at the Festival d’été de Québec, Festival Les Nuits d’Afrique, Franco Fête and the Hamilton World Music Festival.
The band will return to the United States to play their last show in North America before finishing up their tour in Europe this Thursday night July 23 at theSkirBall Cultural Center where the band will kick off the Summer Concert Series at theSkirBall Cultural Center
La Chiva Gantiva has been on the road for over a month supporting their new album Vivo, visiting over 10 cities worldwide, with a total of 24 performances.
Vivo was recorded in their own studio (which they built for the occasion, upstairs from a bar in central Brussels), and was mixed in New York by Joel Hamilton (Blakroc, Sparklehorse, Marc Ribot, Bomba Estereo) with the band’s two main composers, vocalist Rafael Espinel and guitarist Felipe Deckers.
Prior to the beginning of the tour, we had the chance to speak to Rafael Espinel via telephone and here is an excerpt of our conversation:
Al Borde (AB) Tell us about how this project came together.
La Chiva Gantiva (LCG) – Everything began in Brussels, Belgium where three of us Colombians met and we began to explore the vastly rich Colombian folkloric music. We started going to the university and living together and playing our music. In a very organic way, the music began to grow and we got to play in better places and then new members of different nationalities came into the band and it all just happened very naturally.
AB – Where does the name La Chiva Gantiva come from?
LGC – In many small towns in Latin America we have these very colorful busses where people from small towns travel with animals and fruits and these busses are also a form of communication and connection between these small towns and these busses are called “chiva”. “Gantiva” means “guardian of the mountains” in the Chibcha dialect which is spoken by the Muiscas Indians in the central part of the Colombia and it also happens to be the last name of our percussionist Natalia Gantiva.
AB – Was it difficult to achieve success singing in Spanish in a foreign country?
LGC- I think our success came more from our hard work, everything happened in a very spontaneous way, we didn’t set out with an “American dream” type of goal, we just worked very hard at our music and the fans have recognized that and they have made sure word spread and that gave us that extra push.
La Chiva Gantiva will be performing for free this Thursday, July 23 at the kick off of the SkirBall Cultural Center’s Music Summer Concert Series.
For more information about the show, please visit the SkirBall Cultural Center’s website.
La Chiva Gantiva’s music can be found at Spotify, iTunes, Amazon and all digital stores.
