Hailing from San Juan Comalapa, Guatemala, Sara Curruchich is the first Indigenous woman to tour internationally singing in Spanish and Maya Kaqchikel—her Native language. In a featured concert at the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s Indigenous Voices of the Americas program, her opening song was “Abriendo La Voz” (Opening the Voice), honoring the many voices of nature such as the forest, rain, fireflies, and corn. With the help of bandmates Moty on drums, Sandra Moreno on marimba, and Karla Molkovich on bass, Curruchich shows us how Indigenous traditional music from Guatemala can coexist with other genres.

“Indigenous music should not be restricted to only our traditional genres,” she said later in an interview. “We should be able to dialogue with other contemporary genres like rock and pop, and that doesn’t make us less Indigenous.”

Eloy Neira de la Cadena is a program intern for the 2024 Festival and an ethnomusicology PhD student at the University of California, Riverside.